


Show Me Your Teeth

by CAPSING



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (like there are suns burning-out faster), Alien/Human Relationships, Anxiety Attacks, Feral Behavior, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro Angst Fest, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, not as morbid as the tags would have you believe, spoilers for the entire first season
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7852528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CAPSING/pseuds/CAPSING
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Shiro and Sendak are stranded on the same planet. (Set post-Season 01)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Teething

Among all the questionable bodily functions of the human body, Shiro decided he hated sweating most. It beat out the random, embarrassing erections he experienced during his teens, the cracking voice during puberty and his pinky toe, which crushed into corners more often than not.

The blue rock desert glazed around him, and could almost pass for an exotic tundra of a sort, if not for the scorching heat beating down on Shiro from every possible direction.

Eyebrows, however.

Eyebrows were good, Shiro contemplated, dragging another foot after the other. He never particularly cared for his; they were eyebrows, he had a pair and that was pretty much it. Now, as they kept most of his sweat out of his eyes, Shiro sure thanked whichever ancestor that patented the shtick into his DNA.

Shiro giggled, panting in-between, his body carrying itself on auto-pilot as he desperately fought for the last semblance of self-control.

 _Just five minutes_ , a thought caressed against his frazzled mind, cool and comforting, _Just a moment to catch our breath_.

Shiro gritted his teeth, closing his eyes for a moment – only to sway and hastily open them to regain his balance. _As if_ , he thought back angrily, amusement gone and drained as if it was never there to begin with. He didn’t know how long he’s been walking – it could’ve been hours, could’ve been days – but he did know that as soon as he’d stop, he’d stop for good.

 _Isn’t it good?_ the voice said, _Wouldn’t it be better?_

 _It wouldn’t._ Shiro glared at the desolated horizon, blinking sweat out of his eyes, too exhausted to raise his hand to wipe it off his dripping forehead. _The universe needs Voltron_.

 _It does_ , the voice whispered sweetly, _But it doesn’t need you._

* * *

The only reason Shiro doesn’t weep when he reaches the outskirts of the forest is that he’s on the verge of severe dehydration, so he has no tears to spare; the shirt on his back turned dry, as he had stopped sweating a while ago. He’s not sure he’s not hallucinating it; the foliage is a distorting mix of brilliant colours, too bright for his dry eyes and aching brain to fully comprehend. At that point he’s not fully sure what he’s doing; his legs have taken control and his body wobbles after them dutifully, with his hands occasionally nudging against a soft trunk or a raspy bush to keep the body upright. His head is pounding and the voices are turning more insistent, more provoking, which each and every step.

There’s a crunch to his right, and he turns; the colours merged together to outline a creature, which distantly reminds him of those peculiar lizards who can make the skin-flaps around their head stretch like a mane when they’re under duress.

If those lizards were twice the size of a horse, and their skin-flaps were decorated with a pattern of a bad acid-trip.

The lizard trills at him, its maw peeling backwards against four sets of nasty-looking jaws, and the best Shiro’s mind can come up with is:

_This is all my fault_.

 

What happens next is a bit confusing, because between one moment of staring at the face of certain death and accepting his fate and another, the lizard is gone, and the entire forest explodes with a cacophony which pierces Shiro’s ears and claws at his brain, which promptly decides it had quite enough and shuts down.

 

Shiro’s blinking black spots away from his vision before he starts registering any additional information; the world has shifted, and he can make out the faded-red sky peeking through the canopy. There’s growling and screaming – did someone leave the television open? The earth quakes around him in an irregular staccato, but he can’t quite be bothered; his nose tells him of a sweet chemical scent, like the spray people used in the communal bathroom in the barracks.

There’s a figure blocking the sky, and Shiro has to blink at it several times before making sense of it; it’s furry and purple, with a hateful scowl twisting its face.

 _Sendak_ , he thinks, though not everything adds up right – Sendak looks like he chewed on a highlighter marker pen that exploded on his face and covered his mouth and chest with sparkling-neon blue.

This is not how Shiro had imagined hell. Then again, Sendak isn’t how he imagined aliens, either.

Sendak growls, and his edges are starting to look fuzzier and fuzzier.

 _Just five minutes_ , the voice whispers.

 _Okay_ , Shiro agrees, and closes his eyes.

* * *

Shiro wakes up feeling cold and dizzy and sick, but the only thing that registers is the sound of bubbling water to his immediate left. His prosthetic arm rolls him to his side, where he dunks his head straight into the water, gulping it greedily.

Halfway through, when the liquid tickles his nostrils and his tongue isn’t just a shriveled muscle in his mouth, he comes to realize it’s not water he’s drinking – it’s more like a watered-down syrup, with a bizarre taste between liquefied smoke and cherry-popsicles – but he’d be damned if he’d stop now.

He chugs the honey-coloured liquid down until he’s chocking on it, which makes him throw his head back and roll away from the fountain. He dry-heaves several times, drool hanging from his lips, thick and unflattering; he spits it aside with some effort.

Shiro takes a moment to adjust; with each breath he takes, his head feels lighter and clearer. His body feels oddly rejuvenated and well-rested, like it hadn’t undergone any hardships for a long time. He touches the skin on his face, but his fingers don’t sting his cheeks and the skin on his nose isn’t raw and peeling. He licks his lips and doesn’t taste blood seeping through cracked skin, or the corners stinging every time he inhales and exhales.

Actually, he doesn’t remember when he felt this… this _good_.

The last time he did must’ve been ages ago, must’ve been before–

Running his fingers through his dusty hair to avoid this line of thought, Shiro concentrates on his stomach; there’s an edge of a feeling peeking through, the anticipation he used to feel back on Earth, before going through his morning run. Sighing, he propels himself upwards to lean against what he hopes is a tree, taking his immediate surroundings.

 

The good feeling quickly evaporates as his gut fills with lead and dread.

 

“Sendak.” The name slips past his lips in disbelief.

Was there something in the water? Shiro isn’t sure, taking a moment to let his thundering heartbeat settle and inspect the creature crouching a few feet from him, fussing over something Shiro couldn’t see. Was it another hallucination? Is it another one of those times Shiro’s going to wake up in his cell, his mind providing him more and more improbable scenarios to make up for days of isolation and lack of sensory-stimuli?

Shiro’s heart clenches painfully at the thought.

 _Voltron is real._ Shiro assures himself. _This is real._ He looks around him for anything to ground him to this reality – he looks down at his hands and quickly counts the ten of his fingers, but that’s hardly enough; the whole place looks like a psychedelic painting, with Shiro sitting right in the middle of it.

 _Where’s the Black Lion now?_ The voice taunts him, and Shiro bites his lower lip, fists clenching in his lap.

Shiro takes a deep breath and then another, trying to regain control over the situation – a few feet from him, Sendak is crouching, his broad back turned to Shiro, which is highly suspicious. Someone like Sendak would never leave his back open–

Shiro’s cheeks turn warm when he realizes it’s a bare back he’s staring at, featuring more stripes then the single one on Sendak’s head; rather, the stripes align together, shaping a pattern which seems like a black tree with its roots in the sky that grew all the way down Sendak’s back, its branches clear of any leaves. Shiro’s eyes trail downwards before he catches himself, and he pinches the bridge of his nose.

Aside from being naked, the figure has no left arm, but that’s hardly proof. Shiro sees one of Sendak’s ears twitching in his direction, but Sendak doesn’t deem him worthy of a response, choosing instead to idly keep digging into the ground.

 _Well,_ Shiro thinks, _only one way to find out._

“Sendak!” Shiro calls out, assertive and curt. “What are you doing here?”

Shiro grits his teeth when Sendak keeps to the dirt, his paw-like hand throwing the ground carelessly aside. He flexes his own right arm. Attacking the enemy’s back is foul play, but Shiro’s no longer the idealistic youth he was when he had left Earth. There was no place for honour and dignity on a battlefield, not unless you wanted to get killed. The enemy wouldn’t take pity on you when you fall down, wouldn’t announce before they stick a pincer up your gut. Images flash against Shiro’s eyes, making him shudder. This wasn’t the place to try and polish his corrosion-ridden conscience.

 

 Attacking Sendak proves to be a miscalculation on Shiro’s part. The type of miscalculation that sends spaceships crashing back into the atmosphere before they even make it to outer space.

Shiro thought he had Sendak at a disadvantage – his posture lax, his back turned, his enhanced-prosthetic gone.

Spitting blood out of his mouth, Shiro realizes he had thought wrong.

Sendak’s immense bulk is pressing down on him; Shiro feels like he’d been cemented into place, his chest barely allowed to expand under the pressure, lungs already starting to burn. Sendak’s claws are pricking at his right side, ready to eviscerate him. Perhaps the most conclusive way to deduct he had lost are the jaws clamped around his neck, fangs hovering above his arteries, promising to pierce them if Shiro so much as takes anything more than the shallowest of breathes.

Shiro’s head hurts, and he feels nauseous and disoriented, but that’s not unusual, seeing as he was slammed into the ground by an alien that weighs about as much as a rhino.

 There’s vibrations tickling his back; when his ears come back online after they finish ringing, he realizes it’s the vibrations from Sendak’s chest, pressing him down, as Sendak apparently took to growling like a demented neanderthal.

Shiro isn’t sure what’s worse – if this is a dream, he thinks it’s a sign he’s far too fucked-up than he had initially assumed; if this isn’t a dream, he’s just plainly fucked.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro sees Sendak’s only eye staring at him, looking blanker than it usually is. Shiro takes another shallow breath and slowly lets himself turn limp, closing his eyes. If he ignores the teeth hanging above his pulse and prickling his skin like needles, it’s not that bad. He might have hit his head when Sendak flipped him roughly onto his stomach, and his mind is less-than-clear, but with the weight against his back and the vibrations buzzing through his muscles, it’s easy to imagine someone just placed a large molded electric-massage-chair on his back and left it there with a lousy radio station playing in the background.

Denial sure helps his anxiety levels, which tone down when nothing else happens (other than an alien breathing down his neck while considering if he should rip Shiro’s throat out).

Shiro feels drowsy when the teeth finally leave his throat, Sendak huffing one last time before rolling off his back and taking to crouch to his right, clucking his jaw and tongue a few times in displeasure.

Shiro counts to ten, and when nothing else happens, gingerly picks himself to a sitting position, leaning on his prosthesis as his head swims with the joys of vertigo.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Shiro can’t help but ask as he wipes the cooling saliva off his nape; looking at his hand, there are small tinges of pink. He hopes the wounds they came from wouldn’t get infected – god knows what kind of germs Sendak carries in his mouth.

Sendak huffs at him again, baring his teeth slightly, yet keeps from answering.

Shiro is about to open his mouth when his mind halts; Sendak, it reminds him so-very-belatedly, is not wearing his usual gear.

That is, he’s not wearing anything at all.

Shiro sputters, quickly averting his eyes – but he had caught a glimpse already, and it appears there’s nothing to glimpse at but more purple fur. Shiro firmly decides not to spare the subject any other thought. His brain offers a much better track.

“Sendak,” he tries, because Sendak pretty much proved he could effortlessly maul him and Shiro is curious (and might be nursing a slight concussion).

“The Black Lion is here.”

Sendak stares at him, his lip uncurling. He sniffs the air loudly a number of times before turning and going back to the hole he’s been digging.

“Sendak, I promise to swear allegiance to the Galra Empire,” Shiro chokes the words out with great effort, “I promise to get you Voltron.”

At the name Sendak's ears both pick up, and he sharply turns towards Shiro, baring his teeth with a menacing growl.

Shiro stiffens. Suddenly, provoking Sendak into a response does not seem like the brilliant idea it was a second ago.

Sendak charges towards him; Shiro dodges out of the way –

 

– Just as another creature storms out from the dense leaves around them, sounding like a stifled trumpet as it strikes its saw-like beak into the spot Shiro occupied not a moment ago. Sendak stands before the creature, his growl steadily increasing in volume; bits of his fur start prickling out, until it seems like he’s covered in dark purple spikes.

The creature reminds Shiro of the gooey sustenance back on Allura’s ship, if said goo took form and transformed into a slimy, eyeless ostrich, with stripes of mustard striking through its half-transparent flesh like lightning. Its neck and some of its tentacles wobble about while the head snipes at the air in a series of rapid clicks, changing angles sharply – before diving ahead with its beak cutting through the air with enough force Shiro can hear the motion itself as Sendak ducks and turns.

The fight is completely different from anything Shiro ever saw from Sendak. Without the prosthetic arm to weigh him down, Sendak is agile, far too quick for someone his size. Each time the creature tries to strike he leaps out of the way, the long claws on his feet gripping the ground tightly to make up for the strange angles in which he lands. Sendak’s teeth are bared, but he doesn’t immediately strike; it almost seems like he’s stretching the time to amuse himself, as if he’s toying with it like it’s his prey – nothing of his actions resembles even remotely to the brash warrior Shiro fought against.

Suddenly, without breaking the continuity of his movement, Sendak seizes an opening – the creature’s neck is wide open after another failed attempt, as each time it strikes its beak is momentarily caught in the surface it plunged into. Sendak twists his body mid-air and descends upon the creature face-first, sinking his fangs into its flesh.

The creature screeches a horrid sound which has Shiro covering his ears and shutting his eyes; it’s followed by a wet, choked gurgle and a decisive thud of a corpse hitting the ground.

With his heart in his throat, Shiro looks over his shoulder to see Sendak ripping out the creature’s throat with glee, snapping its delicate bones under his claws and digging into its flesh with his hand. Shiro feels bile burning against the back of his tongue as Sendak mangles the body in a maniacal delight, until it’s no longer recognizable.

“Holy shit.”

Sendak turns to Shiro, teeth gleaming and dripping with alien blood and flesh. The spikes along his body smooth back, and the fur on his chest puffs-out like a smug cocky pigeon as he looks at Shiro expectedly.

 

 

Maybe they shouldn’t have used ten-thousand-years-old alien-tech with Sendak’s brain on the line, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I start a multi-chapter fanfic? Definitely not.  
> But would I continue it? Depends on your feedback, honestly. I work best with outsourced-motivation, and comments are a good way to keep me going ;) 
> 
> (i just wanted sendak pinning shiro down with his teeth on his neck so)


	2. Pearly Whites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro faces further distress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you gems so much for your fabulous comments! Those get me so pumped, it was so much fun! I appreciate every one of them! Please continue feeding me motivation :’D Communication with people is really helpful to me, so even if you leave just two words it’s great!
> 
> Heads-up, Shiro’s intrusive thoughts get quite disturbing and violent...  
> Let’s all get very uncomfortable together! :)
> 
> Specific warnings for this chapter: Character throwing up.

As an astronaut, Shiro was in no way spoilt.

He had gone through grueling training, swallowed down bland meals he squeezed out of tubes like toothpaste, peed in zero-gravitational environment and drank it after it was filtered for the entire five months it took to travel from Earth to Pluto.

But even unspoilt people were still people, prone to human weaknesses and cravings.

What Shiro wouldn’t give for a decent cup of coffee.

Scratch that.

Even a disgusting, burnt, sugarless cup of coffee sounded heavenly.

Toothpaste didn't sound that bad, either.

 

Shiro drags himself through the haze of his mind and back to the fountain, hoping last time wasn’t just a fluke. It takes some effort to crouch down without falling flat on his face, but he manages, forgoing manners to again drink directly from the source.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he lets the effects wash over him, delicately swiping away the cobwebs of pain in his throbbing head and queasy stomach. Behind him, Sendak rattles a sound between a cough and a growl, repeatedly grinding his bulk against the trunks of the trees to get the gore and blood out of his fur. Shiro watches, transfixed; this is one of the Galra Empire’s chief military commanders, Emperor Zarkon’s trusted confidante, acting without a shred of the pompous attitude that dripped from his armor and left both his person and his mind bare for all to see. Shiro is not sure he can allow himself to be any more at ease with this version of Sendak, as the Galran flops down to sprawl in the dirt. He stretches his limbs lazily, reminding Shiro of a panther who is slowly waking up from his nap.

As it seems Sendak doesn’t particularly care for Shiro at the moment, Shiro tries to locate his backpack. The idea was Coran’s, and Shiro owes the man a firm pat on the back once they’d all be reunited.

 

 _If we’d all be reunited_.

 

Coran’s character wasn’t exactly easy for Shiro to deal with, even before the man accused him of abandoning Allura (though that sure didn’t help). However, as he was an ally in their common goal of defeating Zarkon, Shiro set aside his personal feelings to allow simple camaraderie to settle instead. True, Coran was a bit neurotic at times, but he did not speak empty words; his age might’ve been ambiguous at best, but Shiro acknowledged he was older and wiser than all of them, as well as a seasoned veteran. Thinking back, he was probably much stronger than any of them, Allura non-withstanding; if not for his nature, he could’ve probably killed Lance as soon as he was unfrozen.

Shiro files this thought way in the back of his head, for later review. Much later.

He finally spots the backpack some feet away, resting on the ground, battered but not damaged; Coran insisted (repeatedly and loudly) that each of the newly appointed Paladins take a backpack with the basic necessities and store it for safekeeping in their Lions, in case they'd be faced with an emergency. What seemed mostly redundant at the time is the main reason Shiro isn’t dead by now; but one backpack could hardly sustain him for more than a week.

Picking the bag, he rummages through it to check it's all still there – two empty metallic drinking bottles in the shape of long circular cylinders, made of some durable alloy; a thin blanket with insulation capabilities, to shield against extreme conditions; two pairs of extra socks (“When you’ve been through the things I have, you know the importance of clean socks”, Coran told them while Lance mimicked him behind his back; now, Shiro sees how right he had been). The medical first-aid kit had been somewhat limited, as Alteans have lost the basic need for immediate medical attention, with their advanced healing pods providing cover for all ailments. The paladins scrounged up pieces of clean fabric they sealed to make for bandages, and added a small pocket knife in lieu of the missing scissors. There’s a length of rope, and, since Coran deemed it essential – a small screwdriver. Then there’s his helmet, which grew too heavy after a day in the ceaseless sun. Shiro hopes the communicator is still on; even if he’s out of range, surely it can help his team locate him when they come looking for him.

 _If they come looking for you_.

“They will,” he mutters, going to refill the bottles with the spring-water.

 _I wouldn’t be so sure about it_.

“You hardly are,” Shiro scoffs, letting the bottle sink into the spring.

He casts another weary glance at Sendak, who looks like he’s very much enjoying himself, as he uses his feet to push himself and slide against the ground, dragging his back through all rocks and bumps while still making primal throaty sounds.

Now that Shiro’s life isn’t in imminent danger, other factors come into play – and he can admit to himself that he positively reeks. If there’s one thing he hadn’t managed to become immune to with overexposure, it’s hygiene; his mouth feels heavy with the flimsy waste of food that settled on his tongue and the tinge of bile still stinging in. The back of his knees itches and he feels the dirt and dead skin that stacked between his toes, sand slipping in through his boots and his socks.

The only thing he feels grateful for is his lack of facial hair; the trait that used to make him feel emasculated throughout most of his life and crushed his self-image as an adolescent proved as a highly beneficial advantage, considering none of the prisoners were allowed near sharp objects unless it was to cut each other down. During his time as The Champion, he was given a quick harsh scrub-down before a match, to make him look presentable – not like a wilting prisoner on the verge of collapse. Those were the occasions he latched onto, the only events he could look forwards to; live through another match, get another shower. Die – and you die covered in grime and blood and your own excrement, like a meaningless cockroach on the sole of a varnished shoe.

 _You already are disgusting. Are you seriously thinking of stripping next to that barbarian?_ The voice stabs through his brain, popping the bubble that kept his shame from flooding all over him.

In the background, Sendak continues making weird grunts and rolling around in dried-up leaves.

 _“_ It’s not like he cares,” he tries to reason with it, capping the first bottle and putting it in the backpack, then dipping the second one in.

 _You should care._ The voice scathingly hisses, _You’d parade around naked next to this savage?_

The image makes Shiro feel ill. “I –“

_You want him to fuck you. Is that it?_

Shiro startles so badly he drops the bottle from his hands like it’s made out of burnings coals; it plops and sinks to the fountain as Shiro starts choking, throat closing up.

 _Can’t even admit it to yourself, can you?_ The voice sneers. _You’re trying to get him to fuck you like an ani–_

“SHUT UP!” Shiro screeches in panic, clawing at his ears. His heartbeat becomes frantic and painful, like every beat is forced at gunpoint; there’s hardly enough air reaching his lungs, and he gasps erratically as he slowly sinks to his knees, trying not to throw up.

A vision flashes before his eyes; a dimly lit room with oppressing heat, a hard metal floor pressing against his aching knees, his hands cuffed together behind his back, and a figure looming overhead, eyes glinting with malice as claws rake through Shiro’s graying hair.

_Or would you rather suck his cock?_

The bile rises on its own, and all that left for Shiro is to retch it out, tasting acid.

 

Something brushes against his shoulder and he flinches away, turning to see Sendak leaning into his personal space.

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” Shiro hisses through clenched teeth. He is so thoroughly disgusted with himself, but any anger or self-contempt attempting to ignite within him is smothered beneath wave after wave of pent-up anxiety crushing him down.

Sendak makes a displeased sound, leaning forwards, but Shiro is still panicking and he’s not having any more of shit.

The shit quota has been maxed-out two days ago, and that’s after a whole year of constantly resetting the bar.

“Stay away from me!” Shiro snaps between gasps, glaring at Sendak through his bangs; Sendak bares his teeth and for one tense moment Shiro dreads he’s about to pin him down again; his heart skips a beat, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to handle it – but Sendak huffs and turns to head back to the precious hole he’s been digging, a small mercy Shiro fully embraces.

Shiro lets himself collapse against a tree, pulls his knees up and places his head in between them. He focuses on one blue spot on the ground as he breathes, in and out, trying to clear his mind and ignore the voice to the best of his ability. The fact his skin still feels grimy doesn’t help. Or that he starts sweating again – cold sweat, chilling him in the humid alien forest.

 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, only that he’s breathing slightly better and that his pulse settled down to manageable levels, when there’s shuffling coming his way. Shiro snaps up, alert – only to startle back from Sendak’s close proximity, merely two feet away. He was further than that, yet Shiro didn’t hear him until he was near; it’s as if he purposely made noise to announce his approach, because for all he know he might’ve just floated his way –

( _He can never hear them coming because they are shadows with yellow eyes and cruel grinning mouths who dissolve from sight as soon as he thinks he can manage to tell one from the other but he can feel their polluted energy scorching at his nerves and he can hear them laugh–)_

 “What are–“

Sendak leans forwards, and promptly drops the object he has been carrying in his mouth into Shiro’s lap. Shiro eyes it suspiciously, picking it up; it’s not too heavy, and it feels refreshingly cool against his left palm. He unconsciously brushes bits of dirt off the offering, even though it is pretty clean for a freshly-dug tuber. Sendak keeps sitting next to him in unsettling close distance, staring him down.

“Stop that.” Shiro frowns at him, swallowing in an attempt to loosen his dry mouth. “Go away.”

Sendak continues glaring at him.

“I’m not hungry.”

Like a cheap sitcom, his stomach makes a loud whiny noise of protest, cramping after days without food and the stress of the frequent expulsion of vomit.

Sendak looks at him like he’s incredibly dimwitted, huffing in annoyance.

Shiro is too tired to fight him off, and realizes it doesn’t matter if the tuber is poisonous or not – this planet seems intent on killing him and his brain isn’t exactly helping, so he might as well live in the now, so to speak, to have a moment to gather his wits without Sendak making things worse.

He looks at the eggshell-coloured root, specked with faint grey; in all the pandemonium of colours and sounds assaulting his senses, it offers a token of tranquility. He doesn’t pick any scent from it; under Sendak’s stern gaze, he sinks his teeth in, stomach contracting in joy for the upcoming food.

 

Shiro spends a moment in suspended disbelief.

This may be a dream, but Shiro lets himself enjoy this part, seeing at the tuber tastes like coffee.

With marshmallows.

Shiro moans around each bite, feeling light-headed with joy, his eyes stinging.

For a short moment, the broken stained glass which surrounds him fades away, his anxiety slithering to rest in its usual alcove in his brain, and there’s just Shiro and the utter bliss of a moment that feels like home.

Crying over a space-turnip must be a new low in the lowest-point record-book of the universe.

Shiro doesn’t care.

 

He bites into his own finger, which snaps him out of his daydreams; Sendak is already digging another hole not too far off. Shiro’s palm feels sticky; the transparent juice from the root spilled across his chin as well. With his stomach settled and his anxiety contained, Shiro decides to quickly see to his needs. With another look assuring Sendak is transfixed with his sand-castles shenanigans, Shiro shuffles out of sight, remaining bottle and a clean pad in his hands.

Military training has made the ritual Shiro indulged as a teenager into an efficient impersonal ordeal. First, he rubs his face clean, then the back of his ears and the sides of his scalp, his undercut saving him much hassle. Then he removes his shirt and uses the cloth to freshen-up his armpits; if he was fully-efficient, he would’ve started with his feet, but Shiro decides those can wait. The liquid turns into a blessing in every sense of the word; with a single wipe, it leaves Shiro’s skin feeling purified to its very pores. Next his cleans his palms and the underneath of his fingernails, though there’s not much to clean with his nails bitten back until they stopped growing altogether. He cleans the scarred tissue between his own body and the prosthesis, and after a short consideration, decides to leave his shirt off; there’s little use to taking a bath if you mean to dive into the mud as soon as you’re out of it.

Shiro unbuckles his belt and stops, peeking from his hideout to reassure himself, and sure enough, Sendak keeps to the mission of displacing dirt with commendable dedication.

He sheds his boots and takes off his socks, wrinkling his nose at the unpleasant odor of fungi that somehow managed to stick to his feet through fire, blood and a road trip throughout the galaxy. None of his toenails are too badly cracked, he’s glad to note. The blisters he’s sure he’d popped and pulsed in pain with every step in the desert seem to have completely healed, leaving only slightly discoloured skin in their wake. He gives his feet a minute more to taste the fresh air – and sheds his pants half-way. He numbs his mind as he goes through the motions automatically; he feels the voices at the gate, and he can’t face them again so soon. Before long he already buckled his pants back up and laced up his boots; he can’t afford to air them when he’s practically a sitting duck in a most-unduck-like-environment.

Shiro cleans out the rag and his shirt with the remainder of his bottle; holding the drenched fabric, it doesn’t smell any less ripe. Frowning, he looks around and spots a fairly smooth tree bark, coloured turquoise and spotted like a Dalmatian.

When he presses the rag against the bark, it lights up like a plasma screen against grabby fingers, the colours around the point of contact shifting; he starts rubbing the rug experimentally against the surface, and a line of foam hisses and pops against the fabric. Shiro lets out a surprised laugh, and keeps rubbing the fabric against the bark; the rag slowly turns lighter and lighter, the colours on the tree shifting gradually until settling completely when the rag is good as new.

“A laundry tree,” Shiro mutters under his breath, “’I couldn’t make this up.”

It’s a cheerful thought to clean his shirt to, then his socks, and after further consideration and anxiety, his underwear.

 

“The glamorous adventures of the Black Paladin,” he chuckles darkly to himself with the tree glowing under his hand, thinking about a time he looked at the stars and stretched out his hands to touch them; _I can’t reach_ , he’d say, and his grandfather would lift him high above his head towards the sky, and even though he still couldn’t reach them, they seemed so much closer.

 

He drops down his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [NOW WITH AMAZING ART OF SENDAK AND SHIRO](http://dozusumbrella.tumblr.com/post/151871543452/sendak-from-this-delightful-fic-ive-been) BY DOZUSMBRELLA - THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! ♥  
>  *  
> Laundry-Tree-Science – it actually has billions upon billions of microbes on it, and when they come in contact with certain organic things they eat and decompose it. The wildlife of the planet uses it to get rid of parasites and dirt. The tree benefits because it keeps it from being eaten. Shiro’s clothes are synthetic, thus inconsumable. Since Shiro’s dominant hand is his right, which is also synthetic, he’s not in danger by the prolonged contact.
> 
> I promise more Sendak in the next chapter. I’d love to hear your opinions! Constructive criticism welcome, too : ) And all comments are loved!


	3. Braces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro and Sendak, sitting in a tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!  
> I want to thank all of you pal-gems for your AMAZING feedback! It led me to do lots of research so this could be a cool sci-fi adventure! It’s the first time I ever try writing a multi-chapter fic, so thank you for your patience and support, they are really important to me ♥
> 
> Chapter Warnings: allusions to rape.

Shiro never trusted statistics or had any affinity towards the science of probabilities.

He just didn't see their appeal; in the end, stuff either happened to you, or it didn't.

Maybe it was because statistics never favoured orphans from low-income households – not when the odds were in their favour – and yet their parents still died in a plane crash (1 in 11,000,000), which was much less probable than a car crash (1 in 5,000), even if neither of them owned a car.

Maybe it was because his ears grew tired of hearing the same old mockery masked as advice when, by the age of seven, he didn’t “grow out” of his ambition to be an astronaut.

Statistics didn't portray the odds of getting into the space-program in a favourable way, with them being around 1 in 42,000 (or 0.0024 percent – neither forms too encouraging); Shiro couldn't even begin to grasp the scale of it, of being picked out of 42,000 people – so he put it out of his thoughts.

Yet Shiro managed, despite the minuscule odds; he succeeded and made it into being an astronaut, leaving his mark as one of the youngest people to ever be nominated to an expedition in space.

At the end, Shiro learned, it wasn’t the odds that were against you – it was people.

(But they didn’t like to be reminded of it when they patted you on the back when you’ve made it through all the shit they piled up upon you, so it was best to shut up and smile.)

In classes, Shiro usually tuned out the professors droning on and on about the improbability of life in outer space; the odds of such a thing were truly preposterous, they'd say - mathematically, it's almost certainly improbable. Shiro didn't like the way numbers boxed those people's minds - in a straight-lined-process that frowns down at imagination or hope, preferring the cool collected assured methodology numbers provided. ‘ _According to probability’_ , he’d think to himself as he scribbled down notes he knew to recite but not to believe, ‘t _he fact either of us were created during our conception is improbable by itself. Odds of 1 in 1,000,000,000._ ’

Why would anyone even want to go to space, Shiro used to think, If not for a chance at grasping the impossible?

 

Currently, "impossible" was busy digging up another root. Shiro cautiously steps towards Sendak; The evil you know, he thinks wearily, marks to be just a smidge safer than the countless evils around he doesn’t know.

It wasn't if Sendak was looking particularly evil at the moment; it was challenging to see him as such, as he reminded Shiro more of a dog after a bone, throwing dirt around determinedly.

Shiro heaves a deep sigh, at loss.

After tending to his thirst, hunger and hygiene, his brain changed gears, sending every cell in Shiro's body the unrefuted message of total-exhaustion-protocol. It was like Maslow’s pyramid was hitting him right in the hypothalamus, brick after brick.

With each step, Shiro’s gait turns less and less steady, as he feels his vision swimming and his muscles draining from any semblance of energy. Thinking suddenly becomes even a harder task; to grasp what he should be thinking about.

Shiro doesn't even process he's staring until he realizes Sendak finished digging and is presenting him with another root; this time, spotted with lemony blots.

He reaches out with his hand and Sendak drops it like they’re playing fetch; Shiro's unprepared to how heavy the tuber is, and stumbles slightly forwards. Dimly, he thinks something isn’t right – but it’s very hard to grasp _what_ , exactly.

"I'd save it for later," he tells Sendak, crouching to put the root in the bag. It takes a few bleary blinks and some fiddling – the zipper had become quite bothersome. Shiro’s mind feels like a fog, and each thought is a wisp which disperses between his fingertips before he manages to make anything of it. It's frustrating, and makes his head hurt further.

Standing back up is a battle of wills by itself; Shiro desperately longs to sit down, but knows he can't; this place isn't safe. He doubts anywhere on this planet is safe, but for now he'd settle for an illusion of safety. He looks around, but the dazzling colours and bizarre foliage just confuse his exhausted mind further; he can't even fathom to begin forming a plan.

A grunt to his right shoves through his thoughts; it's Sendak, looking oddly contemplative, before growling at Shiro. It's not a threatening sound, but Shiro can’t spare the mental resources to him at the moment.

"Stop that," he snaps, annoyed. "I'm trying to think."

Sendak huffs loudly, yet again invading Shiro's personal bubble to nudge his shoulder in a mild headbutt, who has Shiro rubbing the spot after, hissing as he gains his footing. Sendak growls, and shoves at him again, until Shiro stumbles a few steps to the right, earning him a different sort of growl. Shiro is too tired to start another posturing stand-off, and has gained three new bruises on his upper arms before batting Sendak off at his fourth attempt. He decides to let it go, and head in the direction Sendak nudged non-too-gently at, to Sendak's vocal approval – anywhere they’d go would be equally awful and life-threatening, he supposes.

The walk is a blur; Shiro knows Sendak is at his back, and despite a part of him anxiously calling to stay alert and his back feeling exposed and vulnerable, the signals cross and clash, and his brain can't make any sense of them, the exhaustion enveloping them all like quicksand until they're swallowed whole.

 

They come to a stop before a huge shining boulder; blinking a few times, Shiro tilts his head up to get a sense of its size – but it goes on and on, shaping to be a humongous striped crystal pillar - which Shiro belatedly realizes is some sort of a tree, or at least this planet’s semblance of trees. It has wide flat branches, but those only start popping out of the trunk in what Shiro estimates as around fifty feet above ground level.

"Now what?" Shiro asks quite pointlessly, as his brain-to-mouth filter is rendered temporarily unavailable.

Sendak's answer is to simply leap at the tree and sink his claws in, splintering the crystallized exterior like it's made out of candy cane. He effortlessly climbs up another ten feet or so before looking down at Shiro and growling in disapproval.

"Excuse me, Curious George," Shiro calls back, feeling a vein throbbing in his forehead. "Not all of us have pitons for hands–" he wiggles the ten of his fingers at Sendak, too angry to care that the conversation is moot, "– some of us are human." He taps his index finger at the crystal, glaring.

Sendak growls again and Shiro wants to bash his own head against the trunk, but his headache is bad enough as it is. He could probably try and activate his arm, but even then, one limb isn’t enough for the climb, and frankly, Shiro doesn’t think he needs further stress with his mental functions already hanging by a thread. It’s not like he’d be able to rest when he’d have to keep from sneezing or else he’d roll off to his death – assuming, of course, that the branches would support his weight.

A thump next to him signs Sendak dropped back to the ground, looking displeased. He grunts at Shiro, who can’t help but heave a deep sigh of annoyance.

“What do you want me to do? Teleport myself up there?”

Sendak frowns, than, without breaking eye contact, slowly takes to turn around, until his back at Shiro’s face, before hunching forwards and grunting again.

“You can’t be serious.” Shiro snorts, mostly for his own benefit. “There’s no way I’m getting anywhere near your back after that shit you’ve pulled.”

Sendak, quite unsurprisingly, replies with a growl.

“I don’t care.” Shiro says, and makes to sit down.

He’s stopped before he finishes the movement; Sendak grasps the front of his shirt with his hand and unceremoniously pulls him flush against his back, tugging at the shirt until the seams groan a note of warning they’re about to rip. Shiro hastily throws his hands around Sendak’s neck to pull himself up and keep his only shirt intact; Sendak makes a pleased hum and leaps.

Shiro chokes on a mouthful of fur as his grasp immediately tightens, legs dangling uselessly, much as he tries to make them grasp onto anything to assure him stability. Sendak climbs the tree with ease, nimble, as if Shiro weight doesn’t even register, much less his own missing arm. Shiro can’t do anything more than to hold on and hope Sendak picks a branch before his arms give out; his mind is solely focused on using both of his hands to keep holding onto the opposite elbow, which becomes harder with each passing second.

Just when Shiro’s left arm was about to give out, the burn turning too great, Sendak stops. He turns, back first, onto a branch slightly wider than a locker room bench, and Shiro almost collapses against the tree, heart again leaping to his throat, when he unwisely looks down.

Before he can bring himself to think about it, Sendak moves, and the situation turns much worse.

Sendak throws his leg around the branch, and Shiro sees the claws at his feet – more like talons, curved and sharp – dig through the trunk, cracking it with ease and sinking into the fleshy underneath on both sides of the branch. He can hear the crystal exterior audibly splintering as Sendak’s feet nudge Shiro’s legs open.

Shiro’s heart is close to bursting out of his chest as Sendak bends his legs at the knees and draws close; his flight instincts kick in, but there’s nowhere to run. Sendak’s form slowly fills his vision; he never seemed as huge as he does with each inch he gains.

Sendak’s thick thighs are trapping him in like iron bars, even with Shiro basically forced into straddling him, while Shiro’s mind dreads the ultimate conclusion it draws – that Shiro officially lost any sort of control over the situation.

This non-verbal version of the alien is another type of terrifying – which makes the cocky smug Commander Shiro vaguely recalls seem much less frightening by comparison. Shiro wasn’t aware the safety coat that logic was giving him. How could one expect this beast to act rationally? Next to Sendak, Shiro’s strength, grafted through years of grueling training and strict diets, means next to nothing. His best chance is his right arm, and even if he’d manage to get it to work, it doesn’t guarantee he’d be able to come out of a violent encounter without serious injuries.

Rumbling, Sendak steadies him with an arm wrapping around his back, pressing him to Sendak’s furred chest, who’s trying to settle as he pulls Shiro close.

 

Then, to his mortification and horror, Sendak presses their groins together.

 

Shiro cringes in disgust; but there’s not much he can do – Sendak’s arm doesn’t give him any leeway, and his weight pressing Shiro against the tree chokes down any hope of escape, which Shiro’s mind all but screeching at him to commence.

 _What’s keeping him from raping us?_ The voice sneers. _A gentleman agreement? His impeccable morals?_

 _He won’t do that._ Shiro protests weakly. _He’s not a rapist_.

 _Not yet,_ the voice intones morbidly. _Right now he’s not anything much rather than a senseless brute. We can’t trust him._

Shiro shivers, and feels the chest beneath his cheek rumble in response. An odd sensation spreads in his brain, like a ripple with a source he can’t pinpoint. His limbs turn heavy and uncooperative; his body has been lacking a basic need for far too long and it’s soaking up the physical contact like a sponge, making Shiro shiver again, from a different reason, even when he’s thoroughly disgusted with himself.

Shiro hadn’t actively counted how many people he touched without murdering them with own his hands – it’s just that those incidents are fairly memorable, and given his amnesia it felt essential to his sense of self to make new memories, few as they are.

It’s not that he’s mad at Lance. He’s not. It’s totally understandable he wouldn’t want to shake Shiro’s right hand. Shiro is creeped-out by it, and it’s attached to his body. And he did shake it, eventually, unlike Hunk, who made a show of keeping his hands on his head. He’s not mad at him either; Hunk’s a good guy and a reliable comrade.

Pidge is the only one who offers physical contact, kind and unaware of how grateful Shiro is when she had shaken his hand without any hesitation. When she jumped at him, seeking reassurance, as the Sloth-alien startled them both.

Then, Pidge hugged him.

He carefully settled both of his hands on her small shoulders; he knew Pidge wasn’t fragile by any stretch of the imagination – she was strong-headed and fierce, an amazing, accomplished Paladin by her own right – but knowing that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid of shattering her shoulder when his hand would tighten beyond what human bones could withstand; it wouldn't matter it was a mistake, or if Pidge would forgive him afterwards.

It was best he'd keep it from ever happening.

So he kept the hug brief, just slightly shorter than socially acceptable. Pidge didn’t mind.

There’s a few more moments he placed his hand (always his left, never his right) on the other Paladins’ shoulders, offering momentary support – but that was it.

In comparison, there was something freeing in the contact Sendak offered; Shiro didn’t care is Sendak found his arm creepy. Shiro didn’t care if he’d accidentally break one of Sendak’s bones or burn his skin. Sendak seemed indestructible, even with the scars on his face and left shoulder– and Shiro allowed his arms to snake around his bulk in an attempt to fool himself into thinking he’s gaining any influence over his position.

The fur tickles his nose; Sendak smells warm, and something different, familiar. At first, Shiro thinks it’s probably since this is how all Galra ships smelled, but that’s not it. As subtly as he can manage, he sniffs several times more, eyes widening when a discarded path between his neurons blinks up, renewed.

Sendak smells like ink.

Not the ink that stains your finger when your dominant hand is your left and you end up having the side of your palm tainted blue or black at the end of each school day; not the ink you taste when you chew the back of your pen again and again, trying to solve a complicated math problem; not the ink on a freshly printed paper, still slightly wet, that you’re careful not to smudge.

Sendak smells like the ink Shiro smelled on sunlit afternoons back home, watching his grandmother carefully unpacking a small wooden box; a silent ritual Shiro always felt awed by, exact and precise and _theirs_. The ink she dipped her brush in after staring at a blank page for a long time, so long Shiro almost broke the silence – but then, on the brink of his patience, she’d deliver the strokes, sharp and precise, marking the paper with shapes Shiro couldn’t read but still admired.

Grandma never told him where she was getting this ink.

When he asked, she’d smile and say, “ _Directly from the squid, of course!_ ” and fondly pinch both of his cheeks between her knuckles – always gently, never painful.

It’s been years since he smelled it, and it makes his heart swell in his chest, aching.

After she passed, Shiro searched for the brand; it wasn’t a quest, but a small mystery that kept to the back of his brain, popping its head every time he’d come across an art shop. He’d go by all the different brands, charm the vexed shop-keepers and ended up with a small collection of ink bottles he never cared to open more than once.

He wonders about the bottles. It suddenly seems awfully important – the dusty glass containers on the other side of the galaxy, awaiting his return.

No one else is expecting him to return; according to Pidge and the others, he was thought to be dead.

The thought that comes to mind is that Shiro is never going to have a grave. He’d get a monument, if he’s lucky and a bunch of clerks would sign the right budgets and assign a nice spot surrounded in grass you’re not supposed to step on. A monument to remember him by, along with the two other astronauts who lost their lives in the treacherous Kerberos mission. He’d have his name craved upon a metal plate painted in gold, and maybe a statue of him, crafted by an artist who’d do their best by a couple of photo references, but never seen him in the flesh. Maybe it’d be just whatever the person in charge would wish to commission, and Shiro’s face, rendered or otherwise, would not be immortalized anywhere.

Shiro is as good as dead, as far as Earth is concerned.

His eyes feel too hot.

The fur around Shiro’s nose rattles.

Sendak has, against all possible reason, started purring.

Shiro can’t help a laugh; just a small chuckle, rolling out his throat.

It’s hilarious, really, when you think about it. He’s on an alien planet, with an alien from a different alien planet than this one, whose brain was scrambled, an alien who smells like ink and purrs like a cat and can break Shiro’s bones like they’re twigs and rip Shiro’s organs one by one with his teeth if he’s hungry or pissed or just bored.

‘What are the odds?’ Shiro wants to ask his old professors, have their pretentious smirks wiped off their face as they turn flabbergasted and speechless.

The odds, Shiro thinks, must be around the odds of getting kidnapped by aliens (1 in 3,000,000,000) or getting out of that experience alive.

(Shiro’s not sure about the numbers for that one, but he desperately wishes the odds are tripled.)

The chuckle grows and rolls into another until Shiro just laughs. He laughs and laughs and can’t stop laughing, because he’s going to die here, he’s sure. Not in the pits to the cheers of the bloodthirsty masses, not in his cell on an empty stomach, not in space after being thrown out of his Lion and certainly not while fighting to defend the universe – and that doesn’t sound good at all.

He cries, because this isn’t what he wanted. He cries because he’s alone and he’s scared and all he can lean against on this entire planet is the very source of his fright, and yet he pathetically tightens his hold around Sendak because he doesn’t want to die by dropping to his death; because he’s tired of trying to pick a right choice when all he’s been given is two wrong ones.

Shiro awkwardly rubs his runny nose against the fur on Sendak’s chest, burying his face down to block as much of the world as possible. Shifting only barely, he refuses to acknowledge any sort of sensation beneath his waistline and focuses on the tips of his fingers instead. They feel frozen and numb, tracing on Sendak’s back to find a spot they can rest without straining his sore upper-arms. Fumbling, his fingers brush across a velvety texture; pulling his nose and trying to calm himself down, he traces the lines until he realizes those are the ridges he’d seen on Sendak’s back.

Sendak’s purring grows louder, and he pulls Shiro closer until his grip is almost painful.

“I hate you,” he sniffles into the wet, sticky fur. “So much.”

Shiro’s eyelids finally give in, sliding shut as the adrenaline clears from his bloodstream. He slumps onto Sendak and closes his eyes.

 

There were worse ways to die.

(Probably.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how hard it was to make them climb this tree. I had three different scenarios. 
> 
> As always, comments are the best, constructive criticism is welcome, and if you have any particular things you’d like to see – tell me, and I’d see if I could try and fit those in ;)
> 
> Edit: My thanks goes out to Serbajean for correcting my mistake regarding the human brain and pointing out the right part of the brain I should've used. :) Fixed!


	4. All Bark - No Bite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro learns why his ancestors climbed down from the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ DID YOU KNOW THERE'S NOW FANART FOR THIS STORY??? CHECK IT OUT](http://dozusumbrella.tumblr.com/post/151871543452/sendak-from-this-delightful-fic-ive-been).  
>  Warnings: Imprisonment angst. But like, for realz. Just Shiro suffering. Some more. Which I didn't mean to write. But happened anyway. Remember that suicidal thoughts tag? WELL. Also. Violence. Breakdowns. Gore. Minor character death. Yeah.  
> There's the changing tenses midway again. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The floor was warm.

That was the first sign something was wrong.

The floor was never warm. Galran spaceships were kept cold and chilled like their occupants, suited to their furred exterior and icy hearts. During his time as a prisoner, Shiro was never warm, not even once; his constant exhaustion and weariness followed through at the tips of his fingertips down to his toes, shuddering down his back as a chilling thought or gust creeped on him.

His eyes felt like they were glued shut, crusted and grainy.

He knew he had to open them. But that didn't mean he wanted to.

Humans were selfish creatures by nature, Shiro knew, though he often did his best to keep this fact hidden – mostly from himself. He volunteered and offered and helped without being asked; he smiled and chuckled and shrugged off the thanks off his shoulders like slithering snakes. In captivity, all of his carefully crafted history was stripped away from him, like prized medals torn off his chest one by one, along with his name and identity and what little humanity he tried to keep.

For the Galra, he was nothing more than entertainment.

They've kept him fed enough to have the surplus energy needed to fight, and in-between they didn’t care if he slept or if he didn't, and surely thought nothing of his comfort.  
There'd been entire weeks that passed by without a wink of sunlight, months without a single comforting touch. At some point he tried goading the guards into beating him up, but they never so much as blinked at his direction until he screamed himself hoarse and then some.

(He wasn't sure if it _had_ been weeks, if it _had_ been months, but it felt like it. He had no way to know for sure.)

There'd been days he just laid down on that floor and hadn't moved. He didn’t care he soiled himself, he didn’t care that his mouth was perched and his mind was hazy. At those days, the voices seemed like the only allies he ever had, even if their words were loathing and hateful; they used to make him cry, and he was so relieved that he had anything of himself left that could be made to cry. That small part was nothing short of a dying flame facing an upcoming hurricane, staying lit by sheer force of will.

Shiro had to keep living, to find a way to escape, to warn his friends, his country, his planet – about the ancient terror that is coming for them – it was the only chance humanity could've hoped to gain in what would otherwise be a finite, losing battle.

The stakes couldn't have been higher. Shiro had to endure.  

The voices followed him through, kept to important matches – at first, they offered valuable commentary. _Duck right_ , they'd say before he had any time to think about it, narrowly avoiding a boulder thrown his way.

 _Aim for the eyes_ , they'd say, coldly, _It'd be quicker that way_.

Then they changed.

 _We'd never beat this guy,_ a voice mourned at his head as he run for cover, trying to come up with any sort of plan to survive – no, to beat ­– an alien who had scythes for hands. _  
Better just get it over with_.

(It was with a punch to its fragile neck, knocking the head clean off.)

They were the fuel to make his anxiety burn brighter so it'd completely blind him to the world; they were the animosity he felt towards everyone, every single human for which he still drew breath when he so desperately wished for it all to end.

There were times he clawed at his ears so harshly the guards themselves intervened, but the rest of that experience was nothing more than a haze, a mere recollection such episodes took place.

 _It'd be easy_ , the voice told him, as Shiro's numb cheek pressed against the floor of his cell, the cold doing nothing against the swelling. _It's not like you hadn't tried. It's time to let go now._

"No." Shiro said automatically, voice barely holding any conviction.

 _Whyever not?_ The voice sneered, the empathic, saccharine lull of it twisting into a different tune. _The Earth's fate wouldn't matter for you if you'd just die already_ , it claimed with a scorching acerbity, and Shiro could feel it taking shape behind him, a smog collecting strength from the dying breaths of nameless victims, hovering before him so it could steal his own.

So Shiro clamped his mouth shut and shut his eyes tighter, but the cloying fog grew denser and warmer, blowing a breath reeking of corpses scorched by energy blades and sending a small warm drip to splatter upon Shiro's brow, warm like the blood of the youth he smashed open with a stray sturdy crystal he picked before said youth could run a spear through his heart.

 _Open your eyes,_ the voice called, now heavy and malicious. _You're already dead._

"That's not true," he countered, but the voice just laughed.

It laughed and it laughed as the drops hit Shiro's face – first his brow, then his cheeks, then ran down his nose – it laughed as the room grew warmer and warmer, nearly suffocating Shiro's heaving lungs, until he could no longer keep anything shut and snapped open his eyes to stare at another nameless victim whose blood he could never wash away from his hands, another prisoner who just hadn't lived long enough to grow ruthless like himself.

"You think you're alive because you're still breathing," the person spoke, face distorting between dozens – hundreds – of different features, always shifting, never setteling, all looking at Shiro in a way the felt like they were dripping acid straight onto his pupils.

"Let me fix that."

The hands crept slowly around his neck, fingers running along his pulse, and Shiro felt paralyzed by the truth that crept upon his flesh, the grave acts he committed that could never be buried or forgotten; he might never be put to trial, might never have anyone accuse him of anything, but that didn't mean he was a free man.

"Stop," he croaked, when the fingers started to squeeze.

But they didn't.

"Please," he begged, just before his throat closed up completely.

But they didn't.

"It's nothing more than you deserve," they said, just before he made his move, crying out.

 

And Shiro completely believed it.

* * *

 

The world snaps around him like a thick rubber band, confounding and loud and uncertain; where he'd just been in his cell, Shiro feels his legs dangling uselessly beneath him, before the fierce pain in his right shoulder makes itself known.

He tries to get up, not quite registering there's nothing to stand on, his woozy, panicked mind shoving information into his head without sorting through it, jumbling sounds and sights and scents together in a full-blown mess that only serves to make him even more panicked. He breathes out harshly and notes a faint pink light – his right arm is deactivating, still radiating heat that gets to his throat and his ear. Following the glow, he sees Sendak, hanging upside down, like a bat, claws clutching the bark way above their heads. It could've been funny, if not for the fact that Sendak's hand is clutched around his arm, smoke wafting from the point of contact like a stoned caterpillar is hiding underneath it.

 _Don't look down,_ Shiro tells himself, but it's as helpful as telling a person not to think about pink elephants.

He looks down.

Beneath him is a drop to certain death; Shiro only felt like this once, when he lost control of his bicycle in third grade and almost drove straight off into a canal. He scraped his knees and his elbows and a good portion of his left arm and torso, jumping off to tumble on the gravel. He'd come back home late that night, bicycle lost in the murky waters and scratches closing up with dirt and tiny pebbles still embedded in him – carrying the dread he'd felt when he stood at the brink of the bank, staring down into the water and unable to look away.

He was terrified; it was way past curfew, and the bicycle were a brand new birthday gift, a mark point in his way towards independence and adulthood, to paddle his way towards school and back by himself – a sign of trust he stupidly threw away. But when his grandfather opened the door, he didn't yell at him. He just pressed him close within his arms and squeezed him, and didn't let go for a long, long time.

After that, grandfather walked him to school every day, and waited for him at the end of each school day to walk him back home.

(He never admitted to anyone, but Shiro was never as happy to have thrown away a gift in his life.)

His grandfather is long gone, remains thousands (if not millions) of light-years away, and all that Shiro's left with is that same hapless fear that washes through him.

He looks back up. Sendak isn't even growling at him; Shiro feels the strain in Sendak's muscles, as the Galran looks frantically around. Shiro follows his gaze – three feet from them there's another wide branch.

Then Sendak starts to swing him, and Shiro blanches.

"Don't," he manages, "don't you dare."

He tries grabbing Sendak's hand, but his fingers wiggle helplessly, grasping at nothing.

 _It's finally over,_ the voice whispers sympathetically, not a trace of maliciousness in it, just before his panic peaks.

And just like that, it deflates.

 _You did everything you could,_ the voice offers.

"What about the others?" he asks, as he feels Sendak's arm swinging him back and forth like a pendulum.          

 _They'd be okay. They'll fix the Black Lion when they get here,_ it assures him, _You're not irreplaceable._

Sendak lets him go, and Shiro drops.

 

The crash comes as a surprise.

The backpack he wears still softens the blow somewhat, but the canteen's angle digs it in bellow his shoulder and he feels the branch beneath him moving, shaken as much as Shiro. His shoulders are sore and he hopes he hadn't cracked any of his ribs, though with the intense pain in his chest he can't know for sure. His mouth tastes like blood, his gums sting, and for a brief moment, he can't see why he isn't just rolling with the momentum, why he's choosing to snakingly pick himself up and lean against the trunk.

 A movement to his left catches his eye; he turns his head to see Sendak gingerly creeping down towards him.

"You're sick," he spits at him, torn between utter loathing and detached apathy, a discontenting feeling, like the pendulum movement carried from his body to his mind, settling nor here nor there.

He looks at Sendak and sees not a person, not an enemy, but a target – he imagines sinking the screwdriver from the pack into Sendak's remaining eye, the agonized cry he'd make and the way he'd flail around before losing his grip and breaking apart on the ground – how he'd use his hand to burn through his fur, gloating at the irony, adding to the long line across his chest, how he'd rip out one of his claws to slice–

 

Shiro blinks.

 

The involuntary act is like a forcible restart on his brain; it stops whatever it was doing, sweeping away the recent violent thoughts while keeping the information they were based on.

Shiro opens his eyes to see a bright purple burn along Sendak's chest, the fur singed at the edges of it, around an exposed patch of dark purple skin. There's another round burn slightly below his abdomen, about the size of a fist. Sendak isn't moving in that manner because he's creeping – he's baring two fresh wounds that are crippling his ability to move freely, and are undoubtedly painful. Shiro knew from experience that if he managed a clean hit on that spot between the hip and the non-existent belly-button, any Galran opponent would be taken down, and stay down. He wasn't sure what kind of organ Galra had there instead of an appendix, but he never cared to find out. The relevant knowledge that he kept in the front of his mind was that it was the jackpot of Galran weak points, a fatal hit.

Still clawing the trunk, Sendak grunts.

He stops a feet away from Shiro, looking at him. Sendak's face wasn't overly expressive – it was either a frown, or a deeper frown, or a smug frown. Being emotionless bastards, Galra obviously hadn't needed to develop a complex set of muscles along their face to display their emotional state or to communicate.

Sendak's ear droops. It's just the right one, and it's only by a mild degree.

Shiro grits his teeth, the coppery taste on his tongue intensifying as the pressure on his gums burst blood vessels anew.

"Don't give me that," he bites, refusing to feel even the slightest amount of guilt over the fact he apparently unintentionally gave Sendak second-degree burns. "This is all _your_ darn fault." He exhales a long breath, but that barely helps; the situation is so terrible that all that's missing is a thunder-clap and an acid downpour to melt off their flesh.

A thin sound draws his attention to Sendak, who keeps staring at him. Shiro still feels choked, even with the branch stabilizing beneath him. He's in pain, he's stuck and he also desperately needs to pee, which he would've, if Sendak hadn't been staring at him like– like he's _offended_ , or some ludicrous idea Shiro's mind threw around his head to watch it bounce around the walls until Shiro couldn't keep the ringing out of his ears.

The sound continues, aggravating like the sound of people chewing their food with their mouth open, only less squishy and more grating on his eardrums.

"I'm not going to apologize," he folds his hands on his chest and winces as his shoulders remind him it is a very bad idea, before decisively turning his head away. "I've had it with your nonsense, Sendak. I'm done playing your games."

The whine dies out, making way for a low growl; Shiro barely has time to turn his head before he's pressed against the tree, the canteen still painfully stabbing his back.

It must've pressed on a blocked chakra channel, Shiro thinks, because all the fury that Shiro thought had tapered off comes back tenfold, unleashing aggression Shiro hadn't felt since the arena. It covers the pain with adrenaline and mutes his common sense with a thick band of duct-tape across its mouth.

Because there wasn't any chance Shiro was going to put up with this any longer; he was not a ragdoll for Sendak – for _anyone_ – to amuse themselves with, to force against trees whenever they've felt like. He screams, and when Sendak hastily covers his mouth, he sinks his teeth into the scorched flesh, breaking the skin and letting the taste of Sendak's sour blood to mix with his own.

He can't kick Sendak, can't topple him away as he's pinned to the tree like a chloroformed butterfly about to get gutted, but he punches him with all he has. Even with his elbows pinned together in front of his with almost no room to pull a punch, he can feel the impact his hits has, the flinches Sendak can't cover after every hit, the small, pained groan he makes that means Shiro is not as insignificant as Sendak deems him to be, not some little human to meddle with in another sick experiment or just because Sendak can _force_ him to, as he had along every single step of their admittedly very short path.

Shiro feels himself trembling; the adrenaline vaporizes like morning dew, leaving him exhausted, drained and frustrated with his non-cooperating muscles that make him feel weak. His jaw slackens as he pulls his teeth out of Sendak's flesh, disgusted with himself as much as he was disgusted with the taste.

 _It's useless_ , the voice says, _you'd never win_.

Shiro doesn't have it in him to argue; he stares blankly down, towards a small gap between himself and Sendak that he can see the forest's floor through. There's a distant sound, like a wind chime, thought Shiro is probably imagining it. It was his grandfather who gave him his first wind chime, after all, and all those near-death experiences were making him feel nostalgic; seeing as Shiro was sure the end of his life wasn't that far off, the continuity of time seemed irrelevant – it was much nicer to sink into the excitement he felt as he held the glass chime in his hands, delicate. It had a beautiful bright sakura pattern over the blown glass, that carried onto the tanazaku paper his grandma designed herself, a seal of love and good fortune bound to his name.

Shiro's third roommate, a guy named Vladislav, was the one who broke the gift. By then, it was too late; his grandparents weren't around anymore to replace it. It was an accident, obviously; Shiro took it down to clean it, placing it on the table, before realizing he forgot a group study-session and rushing out to make it on time. Vladi came back after a long day, heading straight to bed – and when he crashed against the table because he didn't turn on the lights – the bell slid and shattered.

He told Shiro about it offhandedly, mostly so Shiro would keep his slippers on while in the room as to not to step on any possibly remaining glass. He apologized and said he cleared up the mess the best that he could, before rushing off to class himself.

He'd thrown out a beloved, priceless token of love bestowed upon Shiro like it was garbage.

Shiro lived with him for two more years after that.

 

Shiro's torn out of his memories by the growing ruckus; he did hear a wind chime, and now it sounds like a there's a cloud of them rushing towards them, growing louder and louder and Sendak presses Shiro tighter against him, Shiro's cheek resting across his burnt chest.

The wind chimes rattle in unison, drawing a beat of utter silence, before clacking around all at once as the trees part to make way for the source responsible for it all.

Shiro's gasp is muted by Sendak's giant, bleeding palm.

The creature is massive; not by Galra standards, but by _dinosaur_ standards. It stands at least thirty feet tall, though Shiro can't tell if it's actually standing. It looks like a car wash brush that fell over the ground and came to life, a tangle of metallic shiny threads clicking against one another, shifting and wriggling. The light that reflects off them makes them shine like thousands of diamonds, and the cackle of the threads is almost hypnotic. Shiro tries to lean over and reach out to the pretty, shiny threads – they looks so slick and nice – but something's stopping him – he frowns in confusion, looking upwards at Sendak. Why was Sendak keeping Shiro here? Didn't he want to touch the pretty lights too?

The creature is captivating, the sounds it makes remind Shiro of every favorite song he hadn't heard for so long, speaking to him without words; it rolls around, spiraling across the forest floor. Despite the metallic appearance of the threads, they break apart at times, nudging at the trees, caressing the trunks.

Shiro thinks he spots a laundry tree – the creature slithers away from it, giving it a wide breadth, instead coming closer to inspect their tree. It's great. The creature is great, Shiro thinks. If Sendak would stop being silly and get that hand off of his mouth, he'd tell him, too – and then they could climb down together and pet all the wriggling brush-whiskers and look at the lights –

A creature flies off one of the trees down below; it's cumbersome and slow, unable to fly straight. Another joins it, and another – strange thing, Shiro muses, almost like a flock of birds ­–

Shiro squints his eyes. The music is still wonderful, but he can't shake the feeling that something isn't right, and it feels like it isn't the fact he's not seeing the pretty shining diamond car-brush down below. There's another brief moment of silence, and in the beat, the bright picture before his eyes just makes him think _Hitchcock_.

The first flying creature falls from the sky in a chiming serenade; Shiro's eyes follow its descent down, sparkling round ribbons wrapping around it like bows covering an ugly last-second Christmas present. It flies down into a gap that parts between the whiskers, revealing what looks like a withered crimson cedar bark, covered in holes like it has Stage Four termite-infestation. Shiro feels his stomach turning as the chiming whiskers dig into the screeching creature, sliding out of the holes like famished piranhas scenting out blood. It's a horrid sight; the core literally crawls with life, and the tentative searching tentacles now can't be seen as anything other than glimmering maggots. They dig into the creature as it screams, while others surge up like a wave to pluck the rest of the fleeing flock off the sky, each of them falling like a downed aircraft. He can't look away, like a train-wreck happening in slow motion, as the maggots eat through every living creature, clearing the skeletons before those disappear into the shifting swarm they create. The sounds they make as they grind against each other in the frantic feeding frenzy sounds like scratching glass shards against each other, piercing and painful and sharp. It's a horrible way to die.

It's over in a matter of minutes, with not a single reminder for all the lives lost to the flesh-eating horde. The chimes are back, soft and content, as the creatures spirals across and away, leaving a trail of sizzling slime beneath it that smells sweet and sickening, like rotting fruit.

A while after Shiro can no longer hear it, Sendak finally draws back, removing his hand from Shiro's dry mouth.

 

Despite the warm air, Shiro can't help but feel very, very cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you sign up for the [ Shendak Secret Santa](https://shendak-secretsanta.tumblr.com/post/151650144311/the-voltron-fandom-is-young-still-so-what-better) yet? No? No worries, you've still got two more days to do so! :)  
> And lots of thanks for the amazing feedback pals, you don't know how much it means to me. Seeing as we're 10k words in and Sendak and Shiro hung out for less than a day, this encouragement really helps me not to lose my steam! ♥ (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و  
> (also I got fanart omg)


	5. Interlude - Nibbles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Hey! It’s been a while, and I've been busy. I appreciate your patience ♥   
>  Thank you for your support thus far! I’m pretty sure the next update wouldn’t take as long.
> 
> So. This story actually has a plot planned? Thought I might as well show a bit of that before we’d go back to our usual angst-program.  
> I don’t want to point out specific warnings as not to ruin the reading experience, but if you managed the previous chapters, this one isn’t any more gruesome.

Despite his best efforts, Troxus couldn’t shake off his growing sense of trepidation. He’d spent a considerable amount of his adult life maintaining a decent rank in the Empire’s forces; long enough to know they didn’t _do_ exploration missions. The Galra were conquerors, not diplomats; they used planets for resources, not for recreational purposes.

Adjusting the grip on his weapon for the tenth time since they’ve set foot on the planet, he risks another glance at his companion, a stoic, grumpy fellow named Fuasek. Fuasek’s huge ears are twitching, his vacant stare focused on one of the peculiar trees around them. At least, Troxus thinks it does; it’s tricky to discern it with those who are without pupils.

Fuasek is a recent addition to their ship’s crew, a newly assigned high-ranking officer – after the mysterious demise of a few of those, as of late. Fuasek comes highly recommended – though no one knows from where, exactly – the rumors tailgating him throughout the ship’s hallways, skittering around the feet of dutiful sentinels to the keen ears of those who cared to spare one.

A prodigy in physical combat, currently unmatched – and never one to refuse a challenge or back down from a fight. It’s not difficult to imagine; Fuasek is obviously a Provider, though only in built – taller and wider than any of the ship’s crew. In other criteria, he’s anything but – with a coat splotched with red over green, bare from any symmetrical signs with not even the thinnest line, he’s rather unsightly.

Troxus’ long service taught him better than to cast an immediate judgement over other Galra – but he was hard-pressed to agree it was difficult following orders from anyone with such a ridiculous pair of ears, one of those who are rattled by the smallest noises or flinch within a shooting range or during a clean-up in the armory. Troxus witnessed a few of those during his service, and neither one of them left a lasting impression of capability or invoked a sense of kinship. Never mind the way their ears moved around was so primal and unsightly, like a simple-minded Yupper running after a jingling toy.

 

Troxus tries to set those images aside as his impatience grows with Fuasek’s antics.

“Commander?” He asks, keeping the necessary communication brief.

Fuasek’s head follows his ears as they turn towards Troxus, frown deepening as if Troxus is keeping him away from anything useful.

“Have you sensed anything?” Fuasek asks, as if it’s been Troxus that’s been slowing them down.

“Not yet,” he answers, letting his toes curl slightly into the ground; the way the dying twigs and leaves snap at the slight movement eases him somewhat, and the way the sound seems to irk Fuasek is just an added bonus.

 

Shortly after Fuasek’s addition to their ranks, one of Troxus’ current troop-kin got his hands on a rare documented match – and it had been _brutal_. Emperor Zarkon never strictly prohibited keeping record of tournaments held within the military ranks, but it was known public screenings would result in swift painful punishment. The Empire could not let its citizens see its forces brutalizing each other; citizens wouldn’t understand the necessity of it, ignorant of the inner-workings of the establishment that made it possible for the Empire to triumph as long as it had.

There were records of the matches, as everything was always documents by the drones; but the records themselves were kept in a confidential location that allowed very few people – of the proper rank and classification – to access them, in a process that was itself monitored and archived to track any leaked information back to the culprit.

And as in any organization too large to see its own limits, records managed to trickle down into the grabby hands of those who knew where to search for them, and were either brave enough or stupid enough to _ask_.

Troxus knew better than to ask, and watched the match with his kin, well-aware of the risks involved if they were caught.

The way Fuasek moved was precise and merciless; when he was through with his opponent, he didn’t seem to care that they’ve been bleeding out by his feet. He dismissed the crowd and strolled off the hologram, looking like he had been planning to head off to conduct a surprise inspection for the inventory staff as soon as he’d finish washing off the chunks of flesh from his person. That attitude was a distinctively Provider behaviour, but seeing as he wasn’t one for any of them, it left the troopers rather anxious. The following shift at the bridge after watching the holovid had been uneasy; Fuasek didn’t seem to notice, but tensions had been high; Troxus could feel his fangs lengthen in his mouth and pricking at his upper lip each time he had turned his back to Fuasek, who seemed non-the-wiser about his growing infamous reputation among the crew. While others would’ve benefited from such a display of strength, Fuasek’s sickly coat of red-blotches and his bizarre dark furry spikes along his head – where there should’ve been either a dark furred stripe or a line of scaly spikes – made him seem as more of an anomaly.  

The Empire did not regard anomalies with favour.

 

Claws digging into the rich earth once more, Troxus watched with wariness as Fuasek again snapped into alertness, after losing track of reality for yet another time. Making sure that Fuasek was keeping track, Troxus let his tongue stroke the inside of his cheeks in annoyance. He honestly didn't know how the Galra climbed along the chain of command; after all, personal combat abilities meant little on a galactical warfare scale.

In addition to his physical achievements, rumors had it that Fuasek was a gifted strategist, that had provided counsel in three different interstellar battles, resulting in a public acknowledgement during one of Emperor Zarkon’s addresses to the local sector after it had been conquered.

There were no available records of the speech, and if there were – it didn’t mean much, as no one knew which sector it was and which battles were those, and what, exactly, was the counsel Fuasek offered – so it left them with nothing but gossip, hearsay and speculations, which didn’t add any credibility to such claims. Rumors were easy enough to spread, and some kept through the generations – about a planet that appears out of nowhere when ships send distress-calls, as if it was sent there to aid them by the Emperor himself; dozen regarding the faith of different arena-fighters; several about a mutiny in a mining colony that was quickly repressed and handled; even the one about the reincarnation of Voltron had gained momentum recently.

Tucking his tongue back down inside his mouth, pressing against his gums, Troxus shakes those thoughts away to make room for speculations regarding Fuasek’s rank. Maybe, Troxus speculates, it was to motivate other noise-inclined Providers to join and serve the Empire, better than they did now as lowly pawns of no special worth or value. Perhaps all the contradictions made sense if Fuasek was an artificially assimilated character, too fake to actually exist, explaining the growing agitation in Troxus’ gut, that been increasing steadily ever since their issued vessel landed on the bleak blue outskirts of the forest. It would also explain quite a bit about the change among the high-ranking officers – when Troxus was a child, those were never allowed to command over others, as it was known their capability to make rational choices was extremely limited, and their easily-distracted nature – as Fuasek was proving – made them a poor choice as scouters and tended to hinder their fellow troopers.

 

Troxus is a Galra who’d like to consider himself self-aware; he’s aware he is lacking leadership skills, so he had never aimed to climb up the chain of command, even when his lasting durability allowed him to apply, and a few of his comrades encouraged him to try it over time. He’s pleased to serve the Empire and follow orders from those better suited for it. He’s decent enough in physical battle – winning as much as he was losing, though he never had it in him to truly and fully lash at one of his kin, even when he misliked them greatly. Being responsible to putting one of the Empire’s troopers out of commission seemed wasteful and petty, and he did not think proving his physical strength was worth it. He partook in tournaments during his earlier years, but his performance never stroke with the crowds, and his tough hide kept him from sustaining lasting damage to his physique.  
His aim is efficient (that is – lethal) around eighty-seven point three percent of the time, which ranks him in the fifth-highest category of standard Galra-issued weapon’s usage.

Troxus is, by all accounts, a fairly average soldier – if notably older from all of his troop-kin.

 

Data indicated Troxus and Fuasek an efficient team. Both with efficient experience, Troxus’ hygroreception capabilities were apparently vital to the current mission, and though they were not especially honed, the superiors deemed them sufficient for whichever it was they were after. Troxus assumed it was Fuasek’s responsibility to handle potential threats, while he was sent down to the planet to mark the coordinates of areas with a higher concentration of moisture in the air, as the dense vegetation made the scanners useless.

At least, that was what the superiors told him when he asked. Fuasek just seemed annoyed at him.

No further information was provided.

 

Troxus glances sneakily at his companion, which is following Troxus’ step while his attention is kept elsewhere. Troxus should be reassured by his presence; even with his twitching ears and crude mannerism, Fuasek carries himself as if he’s completely certain in every act and motion he conducts, fearless.

Yet, and despite it being entirely illogical, this only makes Troxus more anxious. The planet is far too bright for his eyes; the colours are everywhere, inescapable even when he attempts to use his secondary eyelid to dim their intensity, but its flimsy coat fails to do so. He tries to lower his eyelids, leaving mere slits for the light to assault his eyes with, which doesn’t help. His head had been aching for the past xhil, overburdened with stimulation. The air is thick with a smell he has a hard time defining, but is unpleasantly alien to his senses, and despite not exploring the planet long, it’s enough to make him wish they’d head back to their ship and falsify their findings. The fact Fuasek _isn’t_ affected by all of those different elements bothers him; his confidence is starting to seem more like unfounded arrogance, rather than calm certainty.

Arrogance, Troxus knows, leads to nothing good.

 

As they both head deeper into the forest, Fuasek gives a sharp flinch that has Troxus jump into immediate alertness – but he spots no threat.

“The communications are out,” Fuasek says as he removes his customized helmet, before giving Troxus a look he’s not sure how to interpret, though he’d bet it’s on some hostility scale of its own. They’re not supposed to remove their helmets until they board back onto the main ship, but Troxus sees no point in stating that – Fuasek knows the regulations as much as he does, if not better – and his ears are probably picking some static frequency only he can be bothered by.

“Understood,” he answers, curt, and keeps from stomping his feet loudly when they bypass over a boulder. There’s only so much noise he can make on an uncharted planet before he’d cross the point of needlessly drawing attention, though the forest had been suspiciously devoid of life-forms, other than the plants. Troxus’ sharp tongue cuts the roof of his mouth in a moment of distraction; the taste of his own blood eases the vivid colours and allows him to notice a slight increase in the moisture, at the direction of the nearest magnetic pole of the planet. He turns towards it.

 

Troxus was of average intellect, he’d come to believe – much of it a healthy common sense that had him knowing how to act, and when.

Troxus did, however, possess one quite un-Galran trait.

He did not know how to name it, but he had it ever since he was a child. It was a sense that informed him that an ill turn of events was rolling towards him on the currents of time and space, telling him in a language he could never quite understand that he better quickly move out of the way – or be squashed.

Covert inspections of public records do not yield any results, and Troxus keeps the trait to himself – even after a time he saves his troop from an ambush or after he had known to hide his unapproved possessions shortly before items started disappearing – afterwards finding one of their superior officers took to relieve those items from his subordinates, before he was relieved of his position.

The sense was always there, but it took time before Troxus knew to discern it from his thoughts or a queasy sense of sickness which was important to cover less he’d be one of the children who were _lost_ , then never found.

Troxus wasn’t yet weaned from his Vouer’s influence and care before it happened, which is fortunate, seeing it is they who have told him to keep from speaking of it.

 

The colony Troxus grew-up in, before he could join the Empire’s ranks, specialized in the processing of metals. As a result, there were plenty of scrap-metals to sort through, a task given to those not strong enough yet to accomplish anything in the Empire’s name.

The scraps were not organized; it was the least-capable’s job to sort through the piles the ships unloaded on the sorting grounds, never-ending platforms at the outskirts of the colony with outposts towering in-between the mountains of miscellaneous items the Empire either confiscated or recycled.

 

(Nobody talks about the broken bodies that were found there, from time to time. Those who do, get lost.)

 

The day it happened, the unease started as soon as the first spaceship unpacked its load. Troxus recalls it clearly. It wasn’t significantly hazardous or different than other piles they were used to sort through, but Troxus' hearts persistently clenched in his lower abdomen, and he did not venture further to the pile as he usually did, to scavenge potential trinkets he could keep or sneak back from the site. It was before the Empire re-educated him, of course, so such mistakes were understandable; his keepers didn’t know better, his educators told him, as is expected in such colonies.

Troxus had let his kin bicker and fight as he busied himself with a distant pile compiled mostly of rusted useless trash, while the sense of unease grew and grew so much it made the skin in his hands prickle. His awareness to the air-pressure was made unusually sharp, and in the moment he sensed the displacement in the atmosphere his brain was too flooded he couldn’t have uttered a single warning.

He didn’t go to the grounds the next cycle, nor the one after it, spending it curled in his Vouer's arms where he hid from the dead eyes of his kin that waited for him under the aftermath of the avalanche.

(Those arms couldn’t have kept him from facing reality, even though they did their best in the short period of time they were allowed.)

 

 

“Do you hear that?” Fuasek asks, voice low, snapping Troxus from his thoughts. He’s about to snap at Fuasek, but can’t seem to find any anger in himself to do so; the agitation is fading, leaving him oddly content. He stops walking and turns to regard Fuasek; his grip on his rifle is lax. Shortly after it dangles from his loose fingers, before falling to the ground, cracking against a sharp bright crystal that pokes through the mould. Fuasek had lost both of his helmet and his rifle; the fur along his arms is starting to bristle.

“No,” he answers, somewhat bewildered. Noise seems to have evaporated from the atmosphere, leaving the air crisp and fresh. In the distance, a familiar voice creeps upwards, like the sun’s caress on his face at the beginning of his second cycle in the Empire’s service, the first cycle in which he’d started his life away from his Vouers and colony-kin.

There’s an insistence in his gut, but it’s fuzzy and unimportant; just as unclear as the purpose of the current mission. The voice is a melody, the song of the scrap-metal from his memories, thinning and stretching around his mind, dimming the colours with memories of iron and steel and the stench of burnt alloys pouring, molten planet cores shaped into tools made to tear through space.

 

A sparkling grandeur parts the trees as it comes into view, shining brighter than its surrounding with scaled stalks of illuminating metal that paint the world with bliss.

 

The metal sings to him, high, melodious and swirling, reminding him the coolness of his Vouers’ touch, the ripeness of the roots they taught him to dig out from the barren land, the fondness their golden eyes held every time they looked at Troxus, even as they gave him their rations to keep the hunger at bay. With each note that grows louder, the memories are sharper – but every time he reaches for one, it slides away towards the next, spiraling to sweep away the dread that recoils in his stomach with hushed promises that let it dissipate and fade.

 

 

The sound is so captivating, that in his last moments, Troxus can’t even hear himself scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Space Racism. It’s out there.  
> Or: How I Thought Season 2 Would Spoil My Plot But Yay I’m Good ‘Till Season 3
> 
> As always, I’m very appreciative of your comments. I would like to say in advance I’m a bit less verbal as of late, so it could take me a while to get back to you all, but rest assured they’d make me very happy and that I’d be delighted reading them.  
> This chapter was inspired by one of the most memorable short stories I’ve read – [A Walk In The Dark](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451639414/9781451639414___2.htm), by Arthur C. Clarke. (Warning: Traumatic Ending – which is probably why I remember it.)


	6. Chew It Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EVEN MORE FANART – MY EXCITED THANKS TO [ oymorozmoroz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/oymorozmoroz/pseuds/oymorozmoroz) for drawing [Shiro breaking down over the coffee-tuber](http://tinypic.com/r/2q2477l/9)! Check it out!
> 
> Celebrating - SMYT had crossed its 100 subscribers mark! ҉*\\( ‘ω’ )/*҉ ｡･☆~ WOW!  
> I'm blown away gems, thank you so much! Knowing there are 112 people across the world who want to know when this story updates - that's so amazing to me!  
> I'd also like to thank you for your overwhelmingly positive feedback over chapter 5.  
> To be honest the main reason it took me so long to post it was that I thought everyone would be disappointed because it had no Shendak.  
> So that's 1-0 for Reality VS My Anxiety.  
> YAY.
> 
> You're probably thinking - how long can one make two people sitting on a tree last?
> 
> ... WELL.

Physics was a subject Shiro mostly enjoyed.

Unravelling the hidden laws orchesting the universe, piece by piece, equation by equation, to enfold rules that were so chaotic at times you just had to accept them without knowing why. Their existence urged you to make peace with the limitations of your human mind, its incapability of wrapping around those truths, and the entire ordeal was a challenge each had to face by themselves; overcoming it was like a religious experience on the path for enlightenment.

 

At that particular moment, though, Shiro did not enjoy physics all that much, and even slightly resented it, because those laws dictated that what goes up – must come down, when gravity came into play.

 

Did it really, though?

 

 _Yes_ , his bladder informed him. Very much so.

 

Cold, hurt and uncomfortable, Shiro shifted slightly on the branch, trying to figure out what to do. Sendak was still hunched over him, but has backed away slightly. Shiro didn’t know how long it was they’ve been sitting there, with Shiro staring at Sendak’s ears as they twitched, glancing at his face occasionally to gauge Sendak’s mood.

The scowl was a fixture, so Shiro took it as a constant value in the ever-growing complex equation his life had become.

With the musical maggot hive slithering away, Shiro didn’t particularly want to leave his makeshift asylum up above; with time flowing as it did, he knew he’d have to, at some point.  

 

Unbidden, memories surfaced in his mind; of laughter and plastic squawking and the smell of soap. Of countless arguments he had with his mother as she attempted to force him to bath, and how hard it had been to make Shiro leave his underwater realm after he was already lured into its depths.

They seemed so silly, now.

 

“I guess it doesn’t matter either way, does it.” Shiro muttered under his breath.

Sendak huffed.

 

Shiro couldn’t make the climb back down by himself; in any other situation, the best method would be speaking with Sendak, but he was pretty sure he’d be speaking _at_ Sendak, which was probably moot at best, and aggravating to Sendak at worst.

With the air around them feeling unpleasantly stuffy and stale and the sun still high at the sky above the canopy of the forest, Shiro felt restless; he shifted his weight slightly on the branch, rolling his sore shoulders to ease some of his tension. With his chest still feeling like a giant bruise and his upper arms sore from Sendak’s attempts to hoard him like a battle ram, it hadn’t done much good.

He sighed, frustrated.

As he came to the conclusion he’d have to try and speak at Sendak, he was aware it served mostly to let Shiro feel in a somewhat tethered control over the situation he was in. Shiro never had a dog or a cat; though he liked them well enough, the military bases he spent a considerable amount of his adulthood at did not. He didn't know how else to broadcast the increasing pressure in his bladder. Would it be best to use soft baby-talk? He shuddered at the thought, grimacing in disgust. Should he shout at Sendak, triggering him into action?

What would Sendak tolerate?

What would cause him to snap?

 

Grudgingly, Shiro had to admit Sendak's behaviour wasn't the worse it could’ve been. Shiro had injured him quite extensively – as the two recent burns on Sendak’s front indicated – and yet Sendak kept from harming him back, even though he proved quite capable, if the jelly-ostrich was any indication. Shiro hadn't the faintest idea what made Sendak act this way, and if he remembered Shiro at all, or just took a liking to him for whichever reason.

 

It was a cloak of intentional ignorance that was threadbare from the start; Shiro’s suspicions about Sendak’s attempts at coerced intimacy persisted ever since Sendak’s teeth scraped the skin of his throat while he was pinned underneath him.

 

The fear that'd been nagging at him most was that it was all some sort of twisted Galra ploy; maybe it was all being recorded and transmitted around the Empire, some form of twisted entertainment the Galra loved so much. An extreme survival game, complete with gore, suffering and wickedness; it seemed fitting to the Galra profile Shiro had in mind.

 

Thinking about it logically, the anxiety was unfounded; what were the odds Shiro crash-landed his Lion into a planet with some ongoing Alien-Reality-Show, same as Sendak?

 

But Shiro did not count on odds to calm him down, because they never did favor him.

 

Another fear was that Sendak was just messing with him; Galra had a ridiculously high pain-tolerance. Who it was to say Sendak didn't think prefer some mild physical pain to cause Shiro further emotional agony in the future?

To gain Shiro’s trust, only to crush it to fit his sadistic nature.

 

A bead of sweat trickled down between Shiro’s shoulder-blades; he shuddered.

 

There were too many variables in this equation and not enough data provided; Shiro had to start bunching them all up and give them his own definitions, and that never meant he'd reach to correct answer by the end of it.

Glancing downwards, another physical principal came to mind; the equivalence principal. It felt relevant; suddenly, Shiro could empathize with the hypothetical blind lady at the elevator, who couldn’t tell if she was free-falling or being pushed downwards. What did it matter, in the end, if both would end up with you splattered across the ground bellow?

 

Running his hand through his hair, Shiro gave a small tug at the hairs resting at his nape and attempted to crunch numbers. If he went by the best-case-scenario, Sendak suffered some sort of brain injury, either by the pod crash-landing, a type of oxygen deprivation (or whichever gas compound Galra needed to function) from the crack in his hermetically sealed pod as it floated around space, or by the attempt to extract his memories with an ancient outdated Altean technology that was not designed for Sendak’s psyche.

Having ‘Brain Damage’ as the best-case-scenario seemed rather promising for Shiro’s chances at surviving this entire ordeal; the glum starting-point felt so low, though Shiro did not want to consider how low can it really go. He found out the hard way that things, unlike what most people thought, could always get worse.

 

Carrying that track of thought, Sendak apparently had some sort of affinity for Shiro, either by a vague recollection or some other criteria from an option-pool Shiro’s mind did not want to even delve the tip of its toe into, which resulted in Sendak deciding to tag-along Shiro and keep him from harm.

 

That idea was so ludicrous Shiro couldn't help but snort a laugh, pulling the muscles at his sides in an unpleasant manner, turning the sound into a bitten-back hiss which made Sendak turn. He looked at Shiro, his glower slightly less hostile than usual.

 

‘ _There’s no perpetual motion_ ,’ Shiro thought. ‘ _Nothing moves without an energy source.’_

Shiro rather liked physics, because, at times, they rather simplified things.

 

He opened his mouth.

 

"We need to go back down," Shiro spoke at last, each word bitter with Sendak's blood still on his tongue. "We can't stay here."

Sendak’s mismatched eyes stared blankly at him. It was only the faint rustling and hums from the forest around them that let Shiro know time did not stand still.

 

Shiro broke eye-contact first, uncomfortable; he was tired, anxious and about fifty-five percent hurting – he didn’t have the mental fortitude not to fold after being stared-down. Shiro’s eyes skittered to find a new focal point; the burns across Sendak’s chest and lower stomach winked invitingly at them, forcing Shiro to look back up.

 

"We need to go back down, Sendak." He repeated **,** a haze of apprehension flickering at the edges of his mind when Sendak remained unresponsive save for the occasional flickering of his ears.

 

How much Sendak understood, if at all? It seemed he knew enough to keep them both from standing in the way of the various murderous life-forms that roamed the forest which Sendak couldn't chew into submission, but that seemed pretty much it.

 

 _It's just like before_ , a voice penetrated through, chafing against his strained consciousness like sand-paper.

 

Shiro gritted his teeth and clenched his fists to keep from pressing them against his ears. He couldn't afford to panic now, not with them both still dangling sixty feet above, on some improvised mezzanine on a tall crystalline sky-scraper. 

He gave a lengthy exhale.

 

"Sendak," he tried again, bracing himself for eye-contact; he held Sendak's dour gaze for a moment, then pointedly looked down.

He swallowed against the bile raising in his throat; he wasn't going to lose a rare opportunity to replenish his strength to panic – while he still has another tuber in his backpack, who knew when else he’d come by food or any nutrition.

 

"We need to go back down," he repeated for the third time, looking back up at Sendak, trying to notice any change in his features.

Sendak’s right ear swiveled back. Its tip twitched, and it swiveled back to face Shiro.

Shiro bit back a sigh of frustration, and rubbed his left hand against his forehead, which felt cold and clammy against his palm.

 

 _Ask him again,_  the voice mocked.

 

 

_Beg._

 

 

 

Shiro clenched his teeth so tightly his jaws ached and his gums stung; they started bleeding again, the familiar metallic tang of his own blood mixing with Sendak’s to a cocktail tasting of dismal. He was stuck here. Again bound to Galra will, constraining his body and his actions. He was an idiot; he should've let Sendak rip his shirt clean off of him, rather that to let himself be entrapped and imprisoned once more.

 

Such a darn idiot.

 

"It's all part of your game, isn't it," he stated, strained. "You're enjoying this. Playing those mind games. Acting like you don't know any better." Shiro snorted, feeling his temper starting to boil. "I –"

But before he could continue his rant, Sendak moved; Shiro have barely scrambled back before Sendak shoved his nose against his collarbone, the dark strip of fur on his head tickling Shiro's chin.

 

He was going to bite out his throat.

 

Barely managing to make any sounds above his heard pounding in his chest, he felt Sendak making some weird growling sound, the vibrations more of an indication than the sound itself. Slowly, the dry tip of Sendak's nose moved, until it pressed against the middle of Shiro’s chest.

 

"What," Shiro croaked at him.

 

Sendak made another low grumble, before moving back.

There was a faint sound of a surface cracking – Shiro briefly considered it to be his own mind – before Sendak threw himself off the branch.

 

For a short moment, Shiro stopped breathing.

 

Because this was even worse than his captivity. 

Sendak meant to leave him here, in a tiny prison with no bars, where freedom itself was the oppressing force rendering him immobile.

 

Sendak meant to leave him here, on this tree – 

 

 

Sendak meant to leave him here,  _alone_ –

 

The ground shook as Sendak landed back on the branch, his wide back turned towards Shiro.

 

Shiro stared, not comprehending.

Was Sendak trying to provoke him further? Did he mean to prove he knew Shiro was his inferior, bound to this tree by his incapability? Did he–

 

Sendak looked over his shoulder and rumbled; then, quite pointedly, looked down.

 

 _Oh_.

 

 

Hands shaking, Shiro reached out to tentatively touch Sendak's back, avoiding the intricate dark pattern spread across it, very much aware of the consequences of his last attempt to touch Sendak's back. Granted, Shiro did try to attack him, and Sendak did just seem to offer – much like he did before he forced Shiro onto his back. The vibrations still shaking through the branch in response to getting reacquainted with Sendak’s mass made Shiro hyper-aware of every movement, from the way his breath shallowly made way into his lungs and out onto the open, to his shivering fingertips in front of his eyes. 

 

As the tips of his fingers brushed under Sendak's massive shoulder-blade, Sendak gnarred and shuffled back, until Shiro's palm was pressed to his back.

Swallowing, Shiro took a shaky breath and carefully placed both of his arms around Sendak's neck. Sendak kept still; Shiro cautiously examined that his backpack was secured to steal himself a few precious moments, before holding each of his arms at the opposite wrist, attempting not to choke Sendak as he settled on his back. Another breath and a healthy dose of denial, and he wrapped his legs around Sendak's torso, locking his ankles, mindful not to press against either of the burn-marks.

 

Sendak huffed, looking over his shoulder, as if seeking confirmation.

 

"I'm ready," Shiro lied, because no one could ever brace themselves for handling their lives to a simple-minded beast.

Sendak apparently considered it good enough; as soon as he moved – the barest shift of his muscles against Shiro’s front – Shiro clenched his eyes tightly and concentrated on breathing.

 

_In_.

 

 

The world swayed around them as Sendak sank his claws into the trunk.

 

 _Out_.

 

Each step splintered the skin of the tree further, awfully loud to Shiro's ears. What if that hive heard them? What if it came slithering back–

 

 _In_.

 

The descend was slow – slower than the climb. Sendak's legs propelled him up easily enough, but he only had one arm to brace their combined weight with against each step he took downwards.

_What’s the point of all this?_ The voice snorted.

 

The ground was their goal, but when they reached it– what then?

And his Lion–

 

 _Out_.

 

His wrist ached; he was clasping it too tightly.

But could he really loosen his hold, and risk falling?

Could he afford to let it go?

 

_In._

 

The smell of Sendak's soft fur and skin provided false familiarity, tickling Shiro's nose in a way which made sneezing seem like an attempt of his body to reject it.

There wasn’t anything soft about Galra.

The same Galra that kidnapped Shiro and separated him from his crew.

The same Galra that made Shiro fight for his life, costing him his memories, fracturing the small amount of trust he’d come to have in himself.

The same Galra that made him–

 

            made him–

 

                        made… him?

 

                                         _Out._

 

Against his eyelids, he could almost see his grandmother's blurry figure through the steam rising from the tea-cup in his hands, secreting a freshly brewed batch. 

She sipped from her cup. Wrinkling his nose, Shiro sipped from his.

 

"It doesn't have any sugar," he told her morosely, trying to scrape the taste off his tongue with his teeth.

 

It wasn't working.

 

"No," his grandmother agreed, and took another long sip. "We didn't add any, did we?"

"It's bitter."

His grandmother smiled at him over the rim of her cup.

 

It was still half-full.

 

 

_In._

 

 

"You know where the sugar is." She leaned over the table, amused, like a willow tree trying to skim the waters with the ends of its laxbranches. "Nothing’s stopping you.”

 

                                _Out._

 

When the world stopped shaking and the ground was still under his feet, Shiro unwound himself stiffly from Sendak's back and straightened his own, and thought how proud he had felt all those years ago, when he downed the entire mug without a single grain of sugar to ease it down.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ground Control to Major Me - _Finally_.  
> [HIT IT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqV7DB8Iwg).


	7. Open Wide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro catches a break.
> 
> For three whole seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE!  
> Another update?! At the same week?! Double of the usual length?!
> 
> After going so far, I’ve decided it’s time for Shiro to have some time-off, to unwind and rest before carrying off to explore.
> 
> … LOL JUST KIDDING  
> [have this cheerfuly-tuned-but-super-angsty-Shiro-song while you're at it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuvDTpGuSTs)

“That’s it.” Shiro said resolutely.

Sendak huffed.

“None of that.” Shiro bit. “We’re taking a break, and that’s final.”

 

They’ve been walking for what seemed to be hours, at that point, but there was no way to tell for sure; the forest’s ceiling didn’t give Shiro a clear view of the sun to be able to navigate. Further, the star seemed to be moving in a peculiar pattern, which didn’t make any sense – it was as if it kept going back-and-forth on its axis along a singular part of its assumed orbit, which was impossible.

Then again, Shiro was vanquishing six impossible things before breakfast by then. He wasn’t sure he’d be surprised if the sun put on a hat and started tap-dancing.  

With the sky not giving him any venue, it left Shiro’s body as an indicator for the passage of time.

And it was tired.

Shortly after climbing down the tree, Shiro cleared his head just enough to consider his options. Knowing Sendak hadn't much of a say on the matter, he figured out they might as well carry on and venture into the wilderness, best done vertically to the trail left by the maggot-hive creature; Shiro didn’t wish to cross it or its likes if he could help it. With the Black Lion immobile at a distant point at the desert, it would do no good to try and navigate back to it; even if he did manage to miraculously make it back by clinging to their frail connection, its systems wouldn't have spontaneously repaired themselves just because Shiro so desperately wished for it - that's what got him into the woods in the first place.

Staying stationary and building a shelter wouldn’t have been practical either – he couldn’t expect Allura, Coran or the others to just magic their way to the planet, guided on the wings of wishful thinking and led to him by a trail of fairy dust.

If an alien crash-landed in the Amazon rainforest, Shiro reasoned with himself, there'd still be civilization up ahead – if only they traveled to it.

 

(There was, of course, civilization in the Amazon itself as well, but not one that could help repair a spaceship. Or, at least, one with fewer tools to do so. Considering what might expect to said-hypothetical-alien when they tried to reach out for help, by Shiro’s own experience, one might suggest the alien to try to keep to the forest, after all.)

 

Moving forwards, Shiro have learned, was always better than keeping still.

Movement was, after all, the basis for everything alive; the very movement of everything's molecules was what made the universe itself possible.

 

Before that, though, Shiro did have to pee.

It wasn't worse as before; military got Shiro pretty used to communal showers and bathrooms, and his bladder was very persistent on the matter. He got Sendak to back off enough in order to relieve himself, and found him waiting, sullen, digging the ground up with his claws. When Shiro stepped towards him, he stopped, but didn't seem like he had much on his agenda.

"Well," Shiro said awkwardly. "We better get going."

For all they were in an alien planet, it was pretty anti-climactic.

Sendak tried to buffer his attempts to move at first, but with some rebuttal from Shiro (namely scowls and hostility) he quickly got the point and went ahead. Sendak ran back and forth, and kept glancing at Shiro over his shoulders, as if to make sure he was keeping track, like those dogs Shiro saw breezing past him on his morning runs as they run ahead, then back to their own joggers, tail wagging and playful.

At one point along the track Shiro spotted another small fountain; he used the chance to freshen-up his face, eyes still slightly puffed from his crying, and to fill his remaining bottle up. He didn’t drink any, though; as important it was to keep himself hydrated, his anxiety deemed it more important to keep the pressure on his bladder minimal.

The longer Shiro kept his pants on – the better.

He felt a twinge of regret at leaving his upper-armor back on the Black Lion, but quickly dismissed it; he wouldn’t have made even half the journey with it weighing him down.

Sendak seemed perfectly at ease at letting Shiro determine their current itinerary, and Shiro decided to act as if he wasn’t there, bouncing back and forth, maybe scouting, maybe just stretching his legs needlessly to taunt Shiro’s pace. He was always within sight – not that Shiro cared to look – either grunting, sniffing at tree-barks, or hopping on trees in-between.   

Shiro hadn't paid it much attention; he simply kept plowing forwards.

 

Only it wasn’t as simple as he initially assumed.

 

It wasn't that the forest wasn't incredible to explore; the medley of trees around was stunning. Some trees had barks that kept gleaming like cheerful fireflies dashed with acrylics; others had leaves that flickered like a very long sequence of a Simon console. There were a few that seemed like they came straight out of a painting; their trunks seemed like they were painted with different types of brushes and colours, like several artists of distinct styles were using them as their joint canvas. Several of them had a construct and structure so mesmerizing Shiro had to keep himself from touching them, just to make sure they’re really there; he wanted to, badly – but he didn’t want to add further risks, the memory of the crimson hive’s bark-like texture fresh in his mind. While Sendak did make a point of climbing nearly every available tree, Shiro wasn’t Galra, and wasn’t keen on finding out how different their bodies were to alien infections. The forest's floor was also interesting, at the start.

Shiro was careful not to step on anything alive to the best of his ability, not out of respect for the wildlife as much as wanting to keep his remaining limbs attached to his body. The ground could've been littered with mines for all he knew, remains of a war long-past that no one bothered to clean-up after.

Shiro's eyes kept darting from the forest's floor, to his surrounding, to the blur of Sendak trapezing around like Tarzan (only more purple and hairy, and with a depressingly smaller vocabulary.)

From time to time, he fruitlessly sought to estimate their position according to the sun, and his growing confusion with the star's alignment kept the coals of his frustration warm, as it seemed Sendak was treating their situation as a fun-day at a Jumbo Gym, while Shiro was panting and sweaty, weary of exploding mushrooms or snapping alien-spiders that would pop out of the cover the uneven ground of the forest provided. It was a small comfort that some of the trees gave away light; it eased Shiro's steps on several parts where the forest was thicker and the ground grew craggy, with roots pushing upwards, as if to trip any transgressors who were too inept to climb them properly.

Movies liked to depict forests as some sort of dense greenhouses; throw some machete-wielders at them for couple of minutes and you can make your way through their depths, with their mostly-flat terrain and an occasional misbehaving branch.

Forests in real-life, however, were nothing of that sort.

(In space, at least.)

Branches kept scratching Shiro’s clothes and face, and the occasional movement from above would drop something down from the treetops and onto Shiro’s head, a notion encouraged by Sendak ramming into the tress like an over-enthusiastic pinball. There were parts on the track the trees grew too thick, their trunks overlapping to such extent Shiro couldn’t just hop above a few, and Shiro had to backtrack and reorient himself, with Sendak grunting from one of the trees above him, sounding very judgmental about Shiro’s capabilities.

By that time, Sendak’s puerile behaviour soured Shiro’s mode; the trees made wade into dense stripes shrubs, twisted in such weird shapes they looked like glazed candies Shiro’s inner-five-year-old wanted to lick. After they passed those (without Shiro licking anything, but with some gloating on his part that Sendak was forced to walk), and as the day carried on, it became apparent that nothing seemed to be living on the forest’s floor. Despite Shiro already encountering the unpleasant jelly-ostrich and recounting others, it didn’t seem like any creature pressed down the dead remains of the forest’s life back into the soil with its weight, into any bearing of a path. The only occasion Shiro did spot a path, he had spotted the charred remains of a cold trail, so wide it was clear it came from a creature he definitely did not want to cross.

Maybe that was what kept the other creatures away, to the outskirts of the forest.

Again choosing a vertical line to the path, Shiro carried on past twinkling spikes and gaudy fruit-like blobs that looked like Christmas ornaments. Several of the trees made weird buzzing noises, which made Shiro's hackles raise, bracing himself for a swarm of murderous insects – but Sendak didn't seem particularly concerned as he tackled onto them, and they passed those without an incident.

 

That was why, when they had finally reached a nice clearing, Shiro decided it was good as time as any to take a much-deserved break. The clearing was around the size of the Castle’s dining hall, with rust-coloured earth dusted with scintillating crystals, similar in shade to the ones in the outer desert.  Without the woods blocking the sun or his surrounding, the area provided a safe perimeter, so Shiro could see a threat coming from hopefully a decent enough distance in order to react – preferably, to flee.  
He couldn't afford to sustain any more damage, with no medical supplies at hand but the very basic ones on his back. If infection would set, he had nothing but his immune system, and for all of the shots the military required him to sit through, they didn’t pencil in a general-Space-vaccine.

Shiro recalled how the smokey-syrup-liquid helped, but for some reason, was weary about using it. The memories around it were fuzzy and panicky, and the tuber he had in the bag felt like it contained liquid; he decided it was best to keep the bottled sugary waters for emergency only, if he'd be on the verge of dehydration or the likes.

Sendak, meanwhile, clearly wasn't facing the same concerns. He didn't act like Shiro biting into his palm was a hazard in any way, much less the burnt flesh he had to be nursing after holding onto Shiro’s head; the burns on his chest didn't impede his movement any longer.

Shiro morosely wondered if Sendak was manipulating him, after all; if he even felt any pain from Shiro’s assault, or was just trying to guilt-trip Shiro into–

 

He decided not to think about it.

 

One of the crystals seemed particularly inviting; its cerulean tint made it seem cool, in contrast to Shiro’s constant sweaty body. Shiro didn’t like high temperatures; they made him easily irritable. He could tolerate them well-enough, if he had to – but usually, the promise of air-conditioning in the near-future staved-off his irritation.

The crystal wasn’t as cool as its colour suggested, and Shiro replaced his upcoming disappointment with another dose of anger, which he directed at the nearest target which wasn’t himself (or a rock).

He knew he was only postponing an upcoming outburst; he had felt it building up gradually on the foundations of stress, exhaustion and a lingering sense of futility.  

He hadn't liked how Sendak trailed after him; he further disliked the relief he felt when he did, knowing he wouldn't have to face the horrendous things living on this planet by himself. He hadn't liked how much energy Sendak seemed to have, when Shiro hadn't seen him eating anything – the jelly-ostrich he chewed through, but didn't swallow its flesh – while Shiro’s stomach had been feeding him nothing but misery ever since they climbed down. Sendak hadn’t attempted to drink from either of the fountains, either – but for all his surly features, Sendak seemed to be in high-spirits, alert, confident and brimming with an endless flow of stamina.

 

 _‘Stamina?’_ The voice, which was mostly quiet, sneered with disdain.

 

Which made, all things considered, Shiro's upcoming outburst perfectly understandable.

 

"Don't." He said, lowly, when Sendak attempted yet again to nudge him off the crystal he designated as his resting place, grumbling at him.

"Don't you dare. Do that one more time," His eyes narrowed, "and I swear I'd punch you in the face."

Sendak seemed to contemplate the threat, and bared his teeth slightly. They made a very impressive set; it seemed the Galra’s taste for blood began from their natural inclinations. Galra had no use for anything that wasn’t a canine, so all of Sendak’s teeth were pointed and sharp. He had double prominent pair of teeth at each of his jaws, long and pointed, reminding Shiro of those necklaces you bought at the tourist's shop at the beach, the ones with a huge tooth taken from a shark.

 

Shiro wasn't unfamiliar with shouting; much as he disliked doing it, he was only human, bound to the same foibles of his kind, and prone to shout when angered. However, Shiro's truly redoubtable outbursts were the ones in which his voice was level and his expression stony; those were like the calm before the storm, an ocean lulling you into a false sense of security before ripping you apart.

Shiro's mind, ever-helpful, already provided him with visual-aid; it played out different tactics and strategies to land the punch, different angles and their effect on Sendak's face; which would knock his fake eye out; which would shatter it and spear his brain with its smithereens; It wasn't like it could damage it any worse.

He could see Sendak's blood flying before him; feel the phantom weight of his face against Shiro’s fake knuckles.

Shiro couldn't feel in his fake-arm like the rest of his body; only the “functional” information was processed. Galra had no need for data that was for pleasure which did not involve violence; it was bizarre to experience and hard to explain. He could feel pressure, tremors, vibrations and the likes; if someone tapped against his arm, he could tell how much strength they applied in that interaction. But he could also discern other information; the way that person was shifting their weight around, where the center of their mass was located. The angle and the airflow around the movement they initiated. The temperature not only in the point of contact, but spread throughout that person's body, in comparison to Shiro's own. It was data Shiro's brain wasn't ever meant to discern and interpret, and translating it left Shiro with a near-constant headache. Moving his arm was like cramming more stuff into a tightly-packed package, when it was already full to the brim. The pressure didn’t have anywhere to go but to knock around in Shiro’s brain, for him to endure.

That, like his ability to vividly visualize scenarios, was now a part of him; as much as he would've liked to cut those loose, at the same breath he knew he couldn't. Giving up on either his arm or his vigilance and alertness would be like sitting in a dark cave, covering up in honey and waiting for the bear to come back and eat you. Those abilities were what kept Shiro alive as long as it did; better be breathing with a headache, then six feet under, with a brain so calm it downright flatlined.

Moving was a part of living, and Shiro's brain was an integral component to that plan. The more it bounced ideas and thoughts around, the higher the chances were for Shiro to make it back alive.

He hadn't considered where Sendak fit in that future; it wasn't the type of scenarios his brain deemed important at that moment. Sendak wasn't a threat, but he was a nuisance. Shiro needed to rest. He needed to eat. He needed to clear his mind for three minutes to let it come up with a long-term plan.

Which Sendak was not agreeing with.

Sendak attempted to approach, but Shiro glared at him until he backed off and huffed, sitting back on his hunches. He seemed to contemplate Shiro’s actions, and the lively vibe he gave out slowly died out.

Shiro took it as a win.

"I'm going to sit down.” Shiro spoke. “I'd tell you when we're done. Don't bother me until then." He enunciated every word clearly.

Sendak didn’t move.

Satisfied, though still annoyed, Shiro walked back to the crystal, keeping Sendak at the corner of his eye. His stomach grumbled piteously, pleading for food.

The tuber was within his grasp. The lemony blots on its exterior seemed appealing, which accounted for how hungry Shiro was. The sky was its usual faded maroon shade, the air wasn't as humid, provided with even a slight breeze in the air, and it was all very well up until Sendak bodily tackled Shiro onto the ground.

 

Shiro’s body wasn’t made to deal with two rage-induced fervors in such close proximity, creating an overwhelming fury. It was rage that made his jaws clench so tightly he couldn't have opened them to scream even if he tried, that made him feel his pulsing veins attempting to burst out of his skin, to taste the bloodlust on his tongue – he was so close to pummeling Sendak's brains out under his hand, cursed creepy lifeforms be damned – before Sendak's weight was lifted.

That's when Shiro noticed it wasn't that he was shaking with rage –  or at least, not only that.

The ground itself was shaking.

It took several long, precious seconds to process what he was seeing.

It was like a rusty sewer pipeline burst out of the ground to lament its condition to all of those who were at its proximity; and decided it was best to do so by wrapping around them to crush their bodies into sawdust. It was thick and uneven in its girth, with darker round bumps appearing along it with no distinction to particular symmetry or order. Its thickest part was roped around Sendak's torso, and a few thinner branches clasped around his limbs; Shiro stood, shaken.

Where did it come from?

How did Shiro miss it? It wasn’t possible– the clearing was supposed to keep him _safe_ –

The reality itself he witnessed seemed skewed, somehow; there was something he was missing.

Then it hit him.

 

The pipeline creature was the same, exact shade of the mingled earth of the clearing, shimmering gems and all. With it whipping Sendak through the air, other tentacles snaked from beneath them,  like a Kraken trying to wrap around a lost ship and drag it to the depths of the ocean.  One of the sides of its tentacles was covered in the same crystals such as the one Shiro took to sit at – in fact, it was that particular lukewarm crystal, that was at the tip of the long pipeline-limb holding Sendak captive.

Shiro felt himself freeze up.

 

There were too many things.

Too many things happening.

He wanted to hit Sendak–

But now –

But now –

 

Sendak was looking at him, and the sight was truly infuriating, raging in Shiro’s mind like the furnaces from Hell itself.

 

Because for all his twisted features, when Sendak looked at Shiro and yowled in distress, he spoke volumes;

He fully expected Shiro to come to his aid and rescue him.

And it was not the arrogant, full-of-himself gaze that he turned to Shiro.

It was with complete, utter and flawless trust that shone through.

He trusted Shiro to dive through the mass of tentacles ripping themselves out of the earth like flames of oblivion, leap into the fray, to risk his life for someone who was one of those responsible for ruining Shiro’s life for their personal gain.

 

And what infuriated Shiro most of all, for all he wanted to misplace that trust in another solar system – was that Sendak, bastard that he was – was completely right.

Activating his arm was like intentionally running face-first into a wall.

Repeatedly.

He knew it’d hurt. He knew it’d last.

But what he hated even worse, was watching people die.

If he ran away– if he let Sendak _die_ – he might as well just murdered him himself.

(His own sense of justice and duty, he hated only a smidge less.)

 

The Galra’s arm input aside, activating his arm wasn’t what hurt Shiro; but it was one of the weirdest sensations Shiro experienced.

He imagined it would’ve been best described as a combination between a peacock spreading its tail to impress, and an octopus spraying out ink as it attempted to flee. He could feel the energy it gave out, the peculiar force he wielded as his arm, like a machine-gun and a blade were wielded into him. That was why he was so reluctant to approach others with it; it could always pose a threat, like a switchblade with a hidden mechanism, ready to be sprang out if he so much as coughed wrong.

Shiro greatly misliked activating his arm. His body wasn’t made to deal with all of its excess energy, attached to his veins, his muscles, his nerves. He could feel the stray currents singeing the pathways of his nerves, enough to sting and pinch. Hours after deactivating it, his muscles would still spasm, starting out small and carrying through exhaustion, like reminders his faults were too inherent to ever truly be laid to rest in his past. Sometimes, when the nights were quiet and his mind was not, he thought the arm was a fitting punishment for him – an abnormal mark of Cain, an embodiment that’d cast him out of society for crimes he could never begin to atone for.

 

(“There are three states in which you shouldn’t make a decision, Shiro,” His grandfather used to say, countless times. “When you are angry, when you are hungry and when you are tired. Remember that.”

Shiro remembered.)

 

Shiro wasn’t angry – he was furious.

He wasn’t hungry – he was famished.

He wasn’t tired – he was exhausted.

Then again, he already did much worse in his life, things his grandparents couldn’t even imagine – surely never imagined for him.

 

Sendak was writhing before him, the dark spikes in his fur bristling as he tried to gnaw his way out of the grasp that was squeezing him, to no avail.

Shiro dove straight ahead.

From the moment his arm flared-up, it was as if his sheet was wiped clean, and the situation was completely changed.

 

Dodge.

Counter.

Down– Left.

Kick.

Jump.

 

The world was minimalized to those simple commends, transferred and flowing in his body before he even processed them, like it was linked to a controller at the hands of a seasoned gamer. His limbs had their own arrangement, bypassing his brain in perfect coordination as he dodged each new tentacle that rose from the upturned earth, crystals spiraling in the sunlight as it grew longer and longer.

Shiro was surrounded with flexible budging pipelines attempting to skewer him alive, as he dodged, rolled and knocked himself around the ground to try and gain some sort of fraction of a moment to assess where he’d need to strike to cut Sendak loose. The tentacle’s exterior was thick, and while it cracked slightly under a few of Shiro’s punches, it was hardly moved by it.

Dodging a thin tentacle lashing his way, Shiro was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the tentacles. They were too many, too much that even being dispassionate didn’t ease their sensory overload. With their growing numbers, Shiro noticed the tentacles seemed to have the same target, but that they failed to move in unison; Shiro saw some of them slamming into the others like blinded titans, tangling with each other, unable to break free.

Before long, Shiro found himself amidst a furor of copper-coloured tentacles, flurrying around like an upturned jellyfish at sea. The round bumps were much like suckers – only most of those bumps opened to reveal a maw full of needle-like teeth, like they were covered with hedgehogs turned inside-out.

He wielded his arm like a weapon, pressing his thumb to his palm as he cut through the air in short precise arcs. There was not a lot of place to maneuver his arm, and not a place safe to fall back to.

A whiplash of sound assaulted Shiro, booming through the clearing so loudly he couldn’t discern his own heartbeat from its echoes.

“Hold on!” he called to Sendak, whose noises were growing far more desperate. The pipeline-tentacle was almost completely covering him now, and the other, thinner tentacles with their bumps opened into maws wriggled towards him.

Shiro cut through the tentacles that held him back at their thinnest points, but with every tentacle cut, dozen thinner ones joined the fray.

 

It wasn’t going to work.

There wasn’t any time.

 

Flipping back, he dodged a few attempts, noting the tentacles again tangled with each other as they attempted to get him; every time he rolled back and retreated, it seemed the mass of tentacles grew denser.

 

 _‘How do they keep following me?_ ’ Shiro thought, frustrated, as he rolled to his left, his banged shoulders so beat-up he couldn’t even feel them properly, as they united to a single large bruise of pain. They didn’t have any discernable eyes nor ears, not even a head; yet they still came after Shiro with precision, no matter what he did.

Another burst of tentacles burst up from the ground from right under his feet, making him stumble backwards and quickly following the motion with an intentional roll back, the ground pulsing like a living thing.

 

That was when it all clicked.

 

It was following _vibrations_.

 

That moment of epiphany was cut short when a tentacle slammed to his side, knocking him onto the ground. Black spots danced before his eyes, but Shiro wasn’t crowned Champion over dozens – if not hundreds – of other alien-species in the arena for nothing.

 

There were people who were sharper when they were made to operate under pressure.

Shiro was at his peak during life-and-death situations.

It just took his enslavement to find that out.

(Shiro could’ve lived a long, happy life without ever finding that out about himself.

But either was no longer an option.)

 

Charging ahead, Shiro cut the space before him in diagonal lines, blinking the black spots away as he punched one of the tentacles straight into its gaping maw with his right arm; it was a risky move, but it proved to be worth it; the tentacles weren’t as durable when Shiro punched them under their exoskeleton, and it imploded and fell down like a wet noodle.

He let his instincts navigate his body while his mind calculated the odds of success, eyes focused on Sendak’s face, still visible and contracted in pain. Sendak’s head and just a small part of his bicep were the only visible things left; the tentacle was like an anaconda, applying what must’ve been a crushing grip on Sendak’s frame. Shiro hadn’t a doubt that if Sendak hadn’t pushed him out of its way, his own ribs would’ve made his lungs into pin-cushions by now.

“Sendak!” he called, not having further encouraging phrases to shut-out with the noise around them hurting every fiber of his being that wasn’t bruised or abused prior; he hadn’t the mental-resources to come up with better.

Sendak’s ear drooped.

 

Shiro fended-off another tentacle, punched one of its maws open, and with black spots still dancing around him like cigarette-burns on a carpet, he came up with a plan and moved.

 

Throwing away his backpack would’ve been equivalent to committing suicide; there wasn’t much point to extract them from the situation if it meant they’d die shortly after, with no supplies to handle both of their torn bodies.

With dexterity he developed through the years, he used his left arm to open the bag and grab his helmet, nudging the zipper close only halfway, just so not all of the bag’s contents would be lost – and leaped.

The tentacles seemed to freeze for a moment – verifying Shiro’s theory – which is when he decided to risk it further, and threw his helmet as far as he could, praying it’d hit the ground, and not one of the tentacles.

He couldn’t spare even a moment to find out.

Landing on the main pipeline-tentacle holding Sendak, he punched his way towards Sendak, willing his arm to flare-up even when his brain felt like it was burning his skull from within. The other tentacles haven’t come after him, but could return at any moment. Underneath him, the tentacle writhed like a snake which was struck through its head with a knife, wriggling to try and remove him. He hung on with one hand and punched some more with the other, until he heard Sendak groaning above him.

That meant he was still breathing.

 

That was.

 

Good.

 

In a move he wasn’t fully conscious of, he managed to get both feet under him and leap onto Sendak’s dangling feet, freed after the tentacle’s grasp had loosened under the assault; he grabbed whichever calf he reached, and _pulled_.

The tentacle didn’t let go, and Shiro’s right arm was both preventing his fall, while also used to pull Sendak out.

Shiro quickly located the nearest maw; ignoring his screaming muscles and still duct-taped common-sense, he propelled himself using his legs, like he was on a swing at the park on a Sunday’s morning with his grandparents. Back and forth– the he kicked his boot straight into the nearest gaping maw, a crystalline lawnmower.                

He probably should’ve felt the pain, given the blood that splashed red from the tears in his skin, but he couldn’t spare it his attention. He just kicked and kicked until he felt Sendak’s weight shifting. Then, entirely by accident, the thruster in his boot sputtered online, sending sparks to rip through the tentacle internally. Booming, it writhed again, almost in rage, twisting manically – and Shiro used the moment it was nearest to the ground to _yank_ – and feel them both thrown away into the edges of the clearing.

 _‘RunrunrunrunrunrurnruNRUNRUN–‘_ Shiro’s mind blared at him, and Shiro complied, shoving his right shoulder under Sendak’s armpit and dragging him, ignoring every cell of his body which screamed in protest and the way the spikes of Sendak’s fur pierced his skin.

It wasn’t important.

Shiro’s body was disposable – replaceable.

He’d deal with it later.

 

The moment Sendak woke-up from whichever hazy state he was at, escaping was considerably easier; he picked Shiro up, threw him over his shoulder, and dashed away just as one of the tentacles was wrapping itself around his ankle.

Shiro was too drained to put up any sort of resistance; Sendak had surely broken or at least fractured a few of his bones. If he was so intent on killing himself, he shouldn’t have set this breakneck pace – he should’ve just stay put and let the underground pipelines clean the flesh off his bones.

 

“You,” he panted at Sendak when he was finally let down onto the ground, “are an idiot.”

‘ _What does that make you, then?_ ’ the voice scolded, as Sendak draped himself at Shiro’s side like a traumatized lapdog and started purring with all of his might. Shiro couldn’t find it in himself to move. He wanted to postpone his awareness for just several more moments, before its inevitable agonized screeching; Sendak’s manhandling might’ve just raptured his spleen.

Purring still, Sendak leaned in, and tentatively licked Shiro’s temple; as the warmth of his tongue left, Shiro hissed and shuddered, bringing his hand to inspect a freshly bleeding cut.

He spat the blood out of his mouth and onto the ground.

 

“A bigger idiot.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, SMYT has passed 20k, and is now officially the longest story I’ve posted online.  
> (And now, time for RL responsibilities.)  
> Tell me your thoughts! Give me constructive criticism! Ask me questions! :D  
> It might take me a while to get back to everyone, but meanwhile it'd make me happy~!


	8. The Tooth Fairy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro gets a Fairy Godmother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this past year had been particularly hectic. Thank you for all the supportive comments, and your patience ♥  
> I’ve been waiting to write this chapter FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR (AND THEN SOME.)  
> [ Here’s our music for today.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chOtemRAYNc)  
> Sorry for changing the tenses again. I’d make up my mind at some point. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
>  **WARNING** : Shiro’s experiencing lots and lots of dissociation.

Empathy was a survival mechanism.

 

Shiro learned about it in the mandatory psychological classes they’ve had in the Academy, seeing as one’s mental health was imperative to the success of their missions, paid by taxpayer money.

With Sendak purring at his side and the taste of blood in his mouth, Shiro thinks those people who have written the textbooks clearly never faced distress, not for a single day in their lives.

Empathy was the shittiest survival mechanism anyone could possibly have.

Shiro glances tiredly to his left, where Sendak blood drips slowly through his fur like honey, clotting it. The spikes are gone, at least, even if the cuts they’ve made still remains on Shiro’s flesh. He can’t seem to particularly focus on either the colour, or the warmth of Sendak’s tongue, still licking, now going through his hair.

 

Probably a concussion.

“Helmet,” he manages to form half a thought, then giggles.

 

Definitely-

Definitely not good.

 

In the Academy, Shiro underwent basic first-aid training, to apply in an emergency situation. In one remarkable session, they had to learn how to analyze any potential injury to their person; start by petting their whole body, to assure they still have all their limbs attached, and slowly categorize which parts were hurting.

Being in space made Shiro question the practicality of his Academy days more often than not, but this lesson wasn't off – Shiro knew, even without patting his body, where the pain was coming from.

 

Everywhere.

 

His burning limbs, his itching skin, the cuts and bruises all over his person. Nothing like practice to analyze the extent of one's injuries, and the Galra provided Shiro with ample time and experiences to practice this particular skillset. Nothing broken, he thinks, poking at his side, arm feeling incredibly heavy – but some fractures in his ribs, possibly. His bones were prone to from previous injuries, with cracklines needing but the right angle to crack into a canyon.

Galra technology may have sped-up the healing process, but their apathy for the subjects going through the procedures, nothing but meatsacks to sew and patch-up, made it so Shiro was never properly healed, but only to the extent he could be thrown into the arena and amuse them.

The bones were mended, but their alignment was never quite right, even by tiny fractions. Shiro knew to check those places first, before moving ahead, and was familiar enough to categorize his injuries by the level of pain they induced.

 

Sendak was a different matter entirely.

Shiro couldn't ask him where he was injured; he didn't know Galra anatomy well enough to know if the pipe-worm went after important locations or organs. Shiro blinks, trying to refocus his vision, not quite having it in him to pat Sendak just yet. He giggles again, even when the sight causes him no amusement. The burn left there by his hand stood stark and plain, almost accusatory in its bright-purple colour. Tilting his head causes nausea to swell, but he has to check – finding the burn beneath Sendak’s abdomen in the same state.

Shiro swallows, and the nausea remains.

Even though Sendak deserved those, the practical part in Shiro couldn't help but berate himself for his stupidity, for impairing Sendak in such an obvious manner.

The burns weren't noticeably healing, either. It hasn't even been two days, but Shiro didn't know if Galra could even recover from burns - did their skin regrow, like humans? Or did he scar Sendak permanently?

He tries to bring his hand to rub across his nose and finds that he can’t bring himself to do so.

In the arena, Shiro found that the human trait of reknitting bone, skin and muscles, to whatever extent, was a coveted one and not at all that common among species. There were some that excelled in it – regrowing limbs in a manner of seconds, or popping up spare limbs, like how sharks had different sets of teeth waiting to emerge. Some could regrow a limb instantly, having some sort of spare stored in their innards.

(Shiro found, through trial with no room for error, they could only do so once.)

Other species, however, were not as fortunate. Gelatinous life-forms had it worst – you could splatter them, and if you prevented the parts from reassembling in some manner, or arranged them in the wrong way, the opponent was doomed, tethering between existence and demise.

The audience didn't quite enjoy watching them flabber about, mindless, like a headless chicken.

Shiro avoided ending them in that manner not only because it seemed cruel – there wasn't any place for empathy on the arena – but because the guards would throw him somewhere dark and starve him for whatever time they wanted. After the second time they did it, Shiro learnt to make it a spectacle, and to end it just a moment after the opponent regained their original form.

 

It reminds him of the eyeless ostrich Sendak butchered, nagging at him, but Shiro can’t figure out why, and lets it slide away.

 

He squints at what’s probably another weird tree, couple of feet ahead of them, but the edges are blurred, while his memories feel sharp enough to cut through steel.

Some of Shiro’s opponents had some sort of mucus to keep their skin from harm, sometimes thicker than Shiro's arm – but as soon as you punctured them at the right place, they spilled out, their insides pouring out like candies from a piñata. That was Shiro used to tell himself after he struck them, not having the luxury of looking away, having to ascertain they wouldn't revive. He can see the bright colours still, like spilled gasoline floating in a puddle, glowing in the sunlight after a storm.

(It smelled like gasoline, too; nothing sweet about it, just a stench that haunted Shiro for days at a time.)

Others could regrow their skin again, but and if you’ve struck the same place twice, they'd be goners. They could usually regenerate their skin immediately, unlike Shiro, who had to bleed first, and was surviving on the merits of the one point five gallons of his own blood (possibly less, considering his arm), but even the ability to restore his lost blood seemed to fascinate the Galra, as well as its bright red colour.

Though maybe, Shiro thinks, they were just sadistic heartless creatures, and there was no actual reason for them to almost bleed Shiro dry but their own twisted curiosity. 

With nausea already stirring in his gut, the memories make his consciousness blur. His thoughts surface slowly from the depths of his self, where doubts and regrets spiral endlessly in a continuous cycle of remorse.

 

He distantly feels the hair at the back of his neck bristling, but it’s hard to concentrate on anything but the thoughts that surface.

 

His age, for example. How old was he?

Shiro doesn’t know how long it’s been since he had left Earth for the mission. He should’ve asked when he could. Keith would’ve known. Would’ve told him.

He waits for the ache at the thought of Keith, for the sense of loneliness to break through, but it’s as if it’s being sent away before it could realize itself, and the emotions never follow, and do not linger.

Shiro returns to his musings. There’s warmth and sound to his left, but it’s being brushed off, so it’s probably not important.

Surely he had been at captivity for several years. He furrows his brow. Was he thirty? He didn’t feel thirty. He felt much older than that. Was is because time worked differently in space?

Shiro thinks of Allura; she may have been frozen for ten thousand years, but Shiro felt older than her. Felt responsible for her safety.

Picturing her in his head, the detachment continues, and his thoughts roll towards a more recent memory, following the smell of ink.

What did they do with all of his things, back on Earth?

With his coat and his worn sneakers, the drill he bought during a sale and had been gathering dust someplace under his bed. His comic book collection, his favorite earbuds for a morning run. His socks. The ugly scarf he once knitted and completed even he’d knew it’d turn out lumpy and unpractical. The tea set his grandfather had left him. A white seashell he kept from the time his parents took him to the beach, a week before they’ve died. The seal from the broken windchime his grandmother meant for him to have–

 

_Are things important?_

 

Shiro’s brow furrows further.

That was an odd thought, he thinks.

Somewhat unnatural.

 

It’s as if–

 

 

A branch cracks overhead, pulling Shiro back to the present. He feels dizzy and lightheaded, as if he’d been in limbo; the forest comes alive around them. There’s the bright colours of the crystalized trunks, the sweet smell of the rotting detritus around them, and the imminent threats awaiting behind every bush and bramble.

It was the works of the detachment he was used to embrace after a fight in the arena, when the adrenaline was all but wasted out and he’d be dragged back to his cell.

This – now – was not a place he could afford to do so.

 

Then, an orb appears out of thin air.

 

It's floating before them, slightly above their heads, not much bigger than a baseball, two feet from them. The consistency of it wasn’t fixated; parts kept turning lighter and then darker, with no distinctive pattern. It was like a patch of reality was ripped, and the code beneath was exposed for human eyes that couldn’t quite make sense of it. It was like someone outlined it with a marker, while its insides kept bleeping and buzzing, a contained chaos with the constant willingness to burst

Shiro exhales very, very slowly. His lungs burn, and his heart is too drained to even pick up the pace of his own heartbeats. He has half a mind to activate his arm, but at his current miserable state the extra strain on his nervous system would lead to blacking-out at best, and a stroke at worst.

The floating orb looks, for a lack of better description, like a glitch in reality.

It’s a never-ending scribbled line coiled into shape, some parts vibrating and creating spontaneous spikes, like those on a heart monitor.

 

Also, it glows.

 

When Shiro looks at it, it just seems fundamentally wrong that it exists on the same plane of existence as himself; it looks like a two-dimensional drawing that’s writhing in pain in a three-dimensional world.

Despair claws at Shiro’s chest as he stares at it. The chiming hive they avoided by hiding on a tree; the pipe-worm they escaped by the skin of their teeth; but this – this being, they could not avoid. Shiro was barely hanging onto consciousness, and Sendak, for all he knew, could be bleeding internally right next to him.

Sendak, he notes, keeps licking him.

 

“Hey,” Shiro speaks to the orb, at the end of his rope. "Listen."

The orb pulses.

“I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t kill us right now,” Shiro tells it, because if he’s being foolish, he might as well go the extra mile.

Then there’s a tendril being extended slowly from the orb, towards Shiro, sketchy and jumpy as it zig-zags towards him through the air.

Shiro honestly couldn’t make a run for it even if he’d wanted to. The tendril settles lightly on his temple, and Shiro’s body becomes entirely numb.

 

There’s a picture being pressed onto his mind’s eye – first, of a metal bottle; then, of the spring he’d drank from, with its cherry-popsicle waters.

Shiro blinks. He’d forgotten all about the water he still has in his bag.

Cautiously, he maneuvers his free arm to rummage through his bag and pick it out.

He hesitates. The liquid was useful in freshening-up, but it makes him queasy, and–

 

– _He’s twenty-one and the pub is crowded and loud. He’s anxious because he doesn’t really know what he’s doing here, he doesn’t even like alcohol–_

_– “Drink up!” one of his friends claps on his back, “Come on, dude!” and he’s–_

Back on an estranged planet, with one alien probing his brain and one trying to like his way towards it like Shiro’s face is a tasty jawbreaker.

Shiro drops the bottle.

 

“What was that.” He looks back to the orb, and he’s–

 

_– “Drink up!” one of his friends claps on his back, “Come on, dude!” and he’s–_

 

“Stop that!” Shiro snaps, then startles when Sendak whines next to him, backing off slightly and looking hurt.

 

The orb pulses.

 

“Fine.” Shiro grits his teeth, picking the bottle up, the pain from the motion still numbed-out by whatever that was. “Fine. A toast.” He raises the bottle slightly, before bringing it to his mouth.

It tastes as sweet as last time. He can feel the pain ebbing away, but when anxiety tries to nibble its way through, it just dissipates, as if there’s a barrier keeping Shiro’s psyche from harm. He looks at the orb, which is still floating at the exact same spot.

 

_“There, all better now.” His grandmother says, kissing his cheek, after covering his scraped knee with a band-aid._

Shiro compartmentalizes this like a true champ, and turns to Sendak, who’s still somewhat pouting, seemingly more injured by Shiro’s misunderstood rejection than by his many wounds.

“You need to drink this.” He attempts giving Sendak the bottle, but Sendak doesn’t take it, instead whining at him some more.

“Stop being an ass,” Shiro grunts, “It’d make you feel better. C’mon.”

Shiro stands and tries to bring the bottle to Sendak’s mouth, but Sendak bares his fangs and snarls in obvious displeasure. It’s hard to get mad when Shiro’s feeling better than ever. He’s not quite sure what it is he’s feeling – physically, he’s aware his body feels healthy and strong, but at the same time, it’s an information he’s aware of, but can’t quite apply.

 

Another memory is pushed into Shiro’s mind, making the compartmentalization rather difficult; it’s of Shiro’s improvised sponge-bath, not that long ago, like a movie-clip playing in his mind-feed without his consent.

 

“I’m not sure I can handle this.” Shiro tells the orb bluntly, as he goes back to the bag to pull out the rag and soak it with some of the remaining liquid.

“This is. This is. This is very intrusive. And I’m not sure if I’m not hallucinating all of this.” He cleans his face and his neck from Sendak’s slobbering, then walks back the short distance and to sit next to Sendak, who’s staring at the rag.

Shiro looks at him. “Don’t.” He says simply, and Sendak huffs and lets Shiro carefully inspect him and clean his wounds. Shiro attempts to be rather thorough, as to not miss anything. Sendak’s fur soaks some of the liquid, so he has to resoak it several times. He cleans Sendak’s palm, holding it gently as Sendak purrs in content, having the mood-swings of a temperamental toddler.

“I think I might be dead.” He says as he rubs the rag against the burn across Sendak’s chest, seeing it slowly fade-out like an old special-effect in a TV series. It didn’t happen with the scarring on Sendak’s shoulder, where his left arm used to be. He’s not smelling anything, either, like his nose had been shut-down.

“I don’t know if I could tell, at this point.” He continues, his body feeling unlike his own as he gets up and around to check Sendak’s back. Sendak stiffens slightly when Shiro runs the rag across the intricate black fur, but the tension quickly morphs into louder purring, with the fur around his throat puffing out.

“You might be dead as well. Not right now, but soon.” He tells Sendak’s back, as one hand mindlessly reaches out to comb the puffed-out mane into shape. “Because you’re a stubborn idiot who doesn’t know what’s good for him.”

 

At the corner of his eye, the orb pulses again. A second tendril starts making its way towards them, but this time, its headed for Sendak.

Shiro would have a bad feeling about it, but at the moment, it’s hard to tell if emotions are an experience he could ever partake in again.

 

– _“Ready to go?” His mother asks, already by the door, and she’s smiling at_ –

– _“We’re going to be late!” Matt tells him, anxious, as they run towards_ –

 

Sendak leaps up unexpectedly, making Shiro, who have leant against his back, to fall back on his ass. He turns to Shiro, distressed, fur spiking again, ready for battle.

Shiro’s not the only one seeing things, then.

“Yeah, I’m not a fan either.” Shiro scratches his head, sighing.

It feels clearer. The air is crisp against his skin, and the dead leaves crunch as he makes to get up.

“But you seem better, so I– “

 

– _“I think we’re done here,” the hospital smells like antiseptic and sickness, but the nurse had been exceptionally nice, maybe even too nice_ –

 

Sendak starts growling and Shiro just sighs into his hands and settles down, rubbing his temples as Sendak charges at the orb with a roar. It floats higher, beyond Sendak’s reach, and circles around when Sendak jumps up to swat it away. As the distance between the orb and Shiro grows, so do the tendrils, flexible; Shiro tries to grab at one, but it passes between his fingers, like an illusion.

‘ _That’s reassuring_ ’, he sighs again, thinking of letting Sendak exhaust himself.

Yet, exhaustion doesn’t seem to be a part of Sendak’s agenda. He growls at the orb, growing frustrated when it keeps eluding him.

 

Shiro takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly, as Sendak’s legs bounce across the ground like the planet’s surface is a huge trampoline.

At least it means Sendak’s feeling better.

(Or that he’s very good at hiding grievous internal injuries.)

 

“Sendak,” Shiro calls out. “It’s okay. I don’t think it’s going to hurt us.”

Sendak huffs at him from several feet away, glaring at the orb still, clearly not convinced.

The words are at the tip of Shiro’s tongue, only –

 

– _It’s immensely loud. He can hear the heartbeats around him, he can hear people breath; a sound like a key scratching against metal – he instinctively knows how far it is from him, and the strength applied against the key._

_“Don’t worry, gwep-ni.” A soft voice speaks, and although it’s so close and loud, it’s not painful. Shiro looks up to warm amber eyes, wide on a thin face. The Galra’s purple fur is streaked through with white, discoloured stripes, with the fur on their head being long and braided, adorned with a few pieces of jewellery. They look so big, and they’re looking at him in a way no one ever has._

_“We have each other, don’t we?” They touch Shiro’s ear, gentle, taking the screeching sounds away, and Shiro feels an indescribable amount of love towards_ –

 

Shiro comes to Sendak looking like a deer, ears perked forwards, and the orb floating right next to Sendak’s nose, like the headlights he can’t look away from.

There’s a tug coming from his temple; the tendrils withdraw and disappear into the mess of the orb’s core, still looking out of place.

Sendak’s make an inquisitive noise at it, crouching and confused, then turns to Shiro, as if he has the answers.

“We can’t stay here,” Shiro says instead, brushing dirt off his ripped pants as he gets up and throws the backpack over his shoulder. “Come on, we got to keep going.”

Shiro looks at the glitchy-alien again, now no longer attached to his mind. He has no idea what to do with it, what could it possibly want with them, but it’s the first thing on this wretched planet (other than Sendak) that haven’t tried to gruesomely murder the both of them. Weirdly enough, it reminds him of that little fairy from Zelda, but he can’t remember its name, but a different one comes to mind.

 

“What do you say, Tinkerbell?” Shiro pauses. “Tink, I think. Tink would work better. You coming with?”

The orb – Tink – glows slightly brighter for a few pulses, before dimming and floating ahead, leading them both further away from the pipe-worm and deeper into the forest.

 

“So much for not going into the light.” Shiro snorts, as Sendak takes a few moment to join his side, still eyeing Tink with mistrust.

The corners of Shiro’s mouth curl upwards before he can help it. An emotion pokes its head from a long-forgotten corner, and it takes Shiro a while to recognize it as hope.

 

 

Maybe he’s not going to die, after all.

 

(Not on this planet, anyway.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The little fairy from Zelda is Navi (but I haven’t actually played those).

**Author's Note:**

> ((p.s - pals if you liked it enough to subscribe i'd really appreciate it if you'd comment as well, even like two words make me really happy))


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